The Oscars

“What art? What science?” D W Griffith, on hearing of the formation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®

The Oscars® John Atkinson

www.pocketessentials.com

First published in Great Britain 2001.This revised and updated edition published 2005 by Pocket Essentials, PO Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing, PO Box 257, Howe Hill Road, North Pomfret,Vermont 05053 Copyright © John Atkinson 2001, 2005 The right of John Atkinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or binding or cover other than in which it is published, and without similar conditions, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publication. “Academy Award(s)®” and “Oscar(s)®” are registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® (AMPAS®).This book is neither authorised nor endorsed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 904048 37 4 987654321 Book typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berks

Love always to Kathy, Evan and Nevie.

Contents

Introduction:The Origins Of The Oscars®

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1927/8 – 1939:The Early Winners

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1940 – 1949:The British Are Coming

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1950 – 1959: Oscar®, Politics And The Blacklist

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1960 – 1969:The Decline Of The Studio System

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1970 – 1979:The Rise And Fall Of New Hollywood

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1980 – 1989:Years Of Plenty

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1990 – 2000:The New Establishment

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2001 – 2003:The Road To Mount Doom

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The Most Shocking Oscar® Oversights

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Reference Materials

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Introduction:The Origins Of The Oscars® Why another book on the Oscars®? There are certainly enough of them around. Some of them are fine works of history; others are little more than annotated lists. Both kinds have their function.What the Pocket Essential guide to the Oscars® attempts to do is a bit of both and to offer a historical context to the lists – which are all present and correct here for, after all, this is what awards ultimately boil down to. It is only fair that I announce any prejudice or knowledge gaps up front. Nobody alive – with the possible exception of a few of my erstwhile colleagues at the British Film Institute and similar organisations around the world – can have seen every nominated film, and I’d bet that not very many have seen every award winner. I certainly haven’t, and I will not attempt to bluff the reader with my in-depth critique of a movie that I once saw a clip of on Screen Test.This is a partial account, and is as much about the films that didn’t win, or weren’t even nominated, than those that did, and I hope that this is where the fun is for the reader.There are good books that cover the political impact of the awards, or go into considerable statistical detail about the administration of the Oscars®, but this is not such a book. It is also worth pointing out that Oscar® categories come and go, often with changes of title, and usually as a 9

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result of changes in Academy rules. There is not enough space in this book to itemise each one, but it is mentioned here as an explanation for what may appear to be sudden and unexplained lapses in consistency in the sections where the winners are listed. I came of age, cinemagoingwise, in the early Eighties, and it is with a heavy heart that I now recognise this decade to be something of a nadir in American cinema (and when we’re talking Oscars®, it is almost self-evident that we’re talking American cinema). It’s certainly my view that some of the most mediocre films to be nominated for, and in certain cases actually win, the Best Picture award are to be found from 1983 onwards (although many of these films are in fact archetypal Oscar® winners).You’ll have to check out the chapter on the Eighties for the real name-calling, but I relate this now as an example of the relative merits of this book – you’ll find more in the way of opinionated posturing in the later chapters. But it is my hope that it is at least informed posturing. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® (AMPAS®) was founded on May 4th 1927 as something between a union and a marketing organisation, an idea driven, as many were in early Hollywood, by Louis B Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).The list of goals produced by the founding thirty-six members reads much like that of any professional guild and covers such facets as promoting ‘harmony and solidarity among the membership’ and ‘the honor and good repute of the profession’ (the ‘profession’ being moving pictures). In And The Winner Is … (Continuum, 1991), Emanuel Levy notes how the timing of this declaration had much to do with the increasing unionisation of motion pictures among technical staff. It is hard not to read the formation of AMPAS® as a knee-jerk riposte to this movement by

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studio executives, fearing for a dependable supply of product (something still very much an issue in Hollywood today). Certainly the studios were, at that time, the most powerful force in the whole industry, as many of them owned the exhibition chains as well as producing the films shown.The formation of AMPAS® can therefore be read as an attempt to intervene in and affect labour relations. It was, however, unclear exactly who, other than the studios themselves, AMPAS® was supposed to represent.There was an attempt to position it as the umbrella union of the ‘creative’ wing of the motion picture industry, but this brought it into conflict with the actors’ union Equity, who insisted that they spoke for their members.The rather foggy rationale for AMPAS® was further emphasised by its defiantly elitist membership code. Not unlike a country club that tacitly excludes undesirables, the Academy is an honorary organisation to which members are allowed by invitation only (an Oscar® nomination being one route into becoming a member). Tensions continued to exist between AMPAS® and the various unions and guilds (including, in 1936, a wholesale and embarrassing breakaway by directors to form the Directors Guild of America) until in 1937 AMPAS® made the decision to withdraw entirely from labour issues, thereby securing its, up to that point, uncertain future. Buried within worthy declarations of intent and longrunning disagreements between interest groups, the founding tenets of AMPAS® also allowed for ‘awards of merit for distinctive achievements’, and it is here that the Oscar® story begins.

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1927/8 – 1939:The Early Winners

The first AMPAS® awards ceremony, the results of around one thousand votes, was held on May 16th 1929 (although the actual winners were announced months earlier). The Academy Award® statuette was designed by founder Academy member Cedric Gibbons and remains essentially the same today. There are oft repeated, and contradictory, claims made as to how, and when, the statuette earned the nickname ‘Oscar’. Depending on who you believe, the trophy: looks like the rear of Bette Davis’ husband Harmon Oscar Nelson; is the spitting image of Academy Executive Secretary Margaret Herrick’s uncle Oscar; or was named by columnist Sidney Skolsky after the vaudeville tradition of comedians asking the orchestra leader “Will you have a cigar, Oscar?” (no, I’ve never heard that, either). All of these sound deeply apocryphal, frankly, but by the mid-Thirties ‘Oscar’ had stuck. Although history records that the first Best Picture winner (actually Best Production) was Wings, F W Murnau’s first American film Sunrise was named the winner of the parallel Artistic Quality of Production category (which also included Chang and The Crowd) which lasted only one year. This apparently arbitrary distinction rather nicely illustrates the tension that continues to exist, at the heart of the Oscars® ritual – between celebrating success in terms inherently understood in Hollywood (the 12

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commercially successful crowd-pleasing technical efficiency of Wings) and acknowledging artistic triumphs (the distinctly ‘European’ look of Murnau’s beautiful box-office disaster). One other factor marks the first Academy Award® season as being the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Every film that played at a theatre in Los Angeles between August 1st 1927 and August 1st 1928 was eligible for nominations … except one. The Jazz Singer, the first ‘talkie’, was disqualified. Not for the last time the Academy attempted to turn back the tide of industrial and artistic development by contriving to exclude the genuinely innovative. As a consolation, the film (or rather, its originating studio,Warner Bros), received an honorary award – again, a tactic that would be consistently used to belatedly acknowledge ground-breaking work in the years ahead. The awards and the ceremony continued to evolve during the Twenties and Thirties into something like the Oscars® we know today. For the second year of the awards, 1928–29, the Academy decided not to announce the winners in advance of the ceremony (except to the press to make the late editions), although the sealed envelopes would not be entrusted to Price Waterhouse (still handcuffed to the locked briefcase today) for safe keeping until 1934. The following year was the first in which the full Academy membership was entitled to vote for the winners, after an outcry the year before when the eventual winners bore an uncanny resemblance to pictures produced by the AMPAS® founders and voting committee. 1930–31 saw the Best Screenplay award split into two to recognise scripts adapted from other media. The 1936 awards were the first to feature Supporting Actress and Actor categories, and a special effects category was introduced in 1939.The Irving J Thalberg award began in 1937, in honour of the whiz-kid 13

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producer at MGM who was a pioneer of the studio system and died young. This award is generally given to filmmakers for distinguished service (although frequently not primarily producers) and consistent output (Hitchcock, Spielberg, and, more recently, Norman Jewison and Warren Beatty have all won it). What of the films themselves? Of the very earliest winners, few are particularly fondly remembered, and those that are tend to be for statistical quirks. RKO’s lavish Cimarron, Best Picture of 1930–31, was, until Dances With Wolves (1990), the only Western to win the top prize, incredible considering it is the quintessential Classical Hollywood genre. Grand Hotel (1931) marked the debut of that Oscar® regular, the star-packed melodrama, and a typical example of MGM’s Oscar®-friendly quality productions in the Thirties. John Ford won the first of his four directing Oscars® for The Informer in 1935.That he should win for such a worthy piece of social comment, and not for the glorious (if, largely, reactionary) Westerns with which his name is synonymous, is typical of Academy voters, then and now. In the first decade and a bit of the Oscars®, two years stand out. In 1934, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night became the first picture to complete a clean sweep of the ‘Top Five’ categories of Picture, Director,Actor,Actress and Screenplay, a record that would stand for a further forty years. Best Actor Clark Gable was the weak link in the same chain five years later (1939) when Gone With The Wind won eight Oscars®, plus honorary awards for producer David O Selznick and art director William Cameron Menzies, Gable losing out to Robert Donat for Goodbye Mr Chips. That Victor Fleming and David O Selznick’s much loved historical romance swept the board in such dramatic fashion is achievement enough; that it did it in such a rich year is amazing. Amongst the other nominated Best Picture’s (ten 14

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in all, the limit of five nominees only being introduced in 1944) were Billy Wilder’s scintillating Garbo comedy Ninotchka, the John Wayne star-maker Stagecoach and that perennial Christmas favourite The Wizard Of Oz. And Howard Hawks’ screwball masterpiece His Girl Friday didn’t even get a look in. In virtually any other year, any of these movies would have been a worthy Best Picture winner and all, arguably, have aged better than Gone With The Wind, a film I’ve never particularly got along with and one that, in retrospect, provides something of a template for Oscar® friendliness. Its combination of grand production values, romantic costume drama, questionable historical authenticity and large marketing spend have, as we shall see, proved irresistible to the Academy time and again during the subsequent sixty years.

The Winners 1927–28 Best Production: Wings Artistic Quality of Production: Sunrise Actor: Emil Jannings, The Last Command,The Way Of All Flesh Actress: Janet Gaynor, Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, Sunrise Director: Frank Borzage, Seventh Heaven Comedy Direction: Lewis Milestone, Two Arabian Knights Writing (Adaptation): Benjamin Glazer, Seventh Heaven Writing (Original Story): Ben Hecht, Underworld Writing (Titles): Joseph Farnham, Telling The World Cinematography: Charles Rosher, Karl Struss, Sunrise Art Direction:William Cameron Menzies, The Dove,The Tempest Engineering Effects: Roy Pomeroy, Wings Honorary Oscars®:Warner Bros for The Jazz Singer. Charles Chaplin 15

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1928–29 Production: Broadway Melody Actor:Warner Baxter, In Old Arizona Actress: Mary Pickford, Coquette Director: Frank Lloyd, The Divine Lady Writing: Hans Kraly, The Patriot Cinematography: Clyde deVinna, White Shadows In The South Seas Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, The Bridge At San Luis Rey 1929–30 Production: All Quiet On The Western Front Director: Lewis Milestone, All Quiet On The Western Front Actor: George Arliss, Disraeli Actress: Norma Shearer, The Divorcee Writing: Frances Marion, The Big House Cinematography: Joseph T Rucker,Willard Van Der Veer, With Byrd At The South Pole Art Direction: Herman Rosse, The King Of Jazz Sound: Douglas Shearer, The Big House 1930–31 Best Picture: Cimarron Director: Norman Taurog, Skippy Actor: Lionel Barrymore, A Free Soul Actress: Marie Dressler, Min And Bill Original Screenplay: John Monk Saunders, The Dawn Patrol Adapted Screenplay: Howard Estabrook, Cimarron Cinematography: Floyd Crosby, Tabu Art Direction: Max Ree, Cimarron Sound:The Paramount Sound Department 1931–32 Best Picture: Grand Hotel Director: Frank Borzage, Bad Girl Actor:Wallace Beery, The Champ; Fredric March, Dr Jekyll And 16

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Mr Hyde (tie) Actress: Helen Hayes, The Sin Of Madelon Claudet Original Screenplay: Frances Marion, The Champ Adapted Screenplay: Edwin Burke, Bad Girl Cinematography: Lee Garmes, Shanghai Express Art Direction: Gordon Wiles, Transatlantic Sound:The Paramount Sound Department Short Cartoon: Flowers And Trees Short Comedy: The Music Box Short Novelty: Wrestling Swordfish Honorary Oscar®:Walt Disney 1932–33 Picture: Cavalcade Director: Frank Lloyd, Cavalcade Actor: Charles Laughton, The Private Life Of Henry VIII Actress: Katharine Hepburn, Morning Glory Original Screenplay: Robert Lord, One Way Passage Adapted Screenplay:Victor Heerman, Sarah Y Mason, Little Women Cinematography: Charles Bryant Lang, Jr, A Farewell To Arms Art Direction:William S Darling, Cavalcade Sound: Franklin B Hansen, A Farewell To Arms Short Cartoon: Three Little Pigs Short Comedy: So This Is Harris Short Novelty: Krakatoa 1934 Picture: It Happened One Night Director: Frank Capra, It Happened One Night Actor: Clark Gable, It Happened One Night Actress: Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night Original Screenplay: Arthur Ceaser, Manhattan Melodrama Adapted Screenplay: Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night Cinematography:Victor Milner, Cleopatra Editing: Conrad Nervig, Eskimo Original Score: Louis Silvers, One Night Of Love 17

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Original Song: Con Conrad, Herb Magidson, ‘The Continental’, The Gay Divorcee Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Frederic Hope, The Merry Widow Sound: John Livadry, One Night Of Love Short Cartoon: The Tortoise And The Hare Short Comedy: La Cucaracha Short Novelty: City Of Wax Honorary Oscar®: Shirley Temple 1935 Picture: Mutiny On The Bounty Director: John Ford, The Informer Actor:Victor McLaglen, The Informer Actress: Bette Davies, Dangerous Original Story: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, The Scoundrel Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, The Informer Cinematography: Hal Mohr, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Editing: Ralph Dawson, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Original Score: Max Steiner, The Informer Original Song: Harry Warren, Al Dubin, ‘Lullaby Of Broadway’, Gold Diggers Of 1935 Art Direction: Richard Day, The Dark Angel Sound: Douglas Shearer, Naughty Marietta Dance Direction: David Gould, Folies Bergère, Broadway Melody Of 1936 Short Cartoon: Three Orphan Kittens Short Comedy: How To Sleep Short Novelty: Wings Over Everest Honorary Oscar®: D W Griffith 1936 Picture: The Great Ziegfeld Director: Frank Capra, Mr Deeds Goes To Town Actor: Paul Muni, The Story Of Louis Pasteur Actress: Luise Rainer, The Great Ziegfeld Supporting Actor:Walter Brennan, Come And Get It 18

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Supporting Actress: Gale Sondergaard, Anthony Adverse Original Story & Screenplay: Pierre Collings, Sheridan Gibney, The Story Of Louis Pasteur Cinematography: Gaetano Gaudio, Anthony Adverse Editing: Ralph Dawson, Anthony Adverse Original Score: Leo Forbstein, Anthony Adverse Original Song: Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, Swing Time Art Direction: Richard Day, Dodsworth Sound: Douglas Shearer, San Francisco Dance Direction: Seymour Felix, The Great Ziegfeld Short Cartoon: Country Cousin Short One-Reel: Bored Of Education Short Two-Reel: The Public Pays Colour Short: Give Me Liberty Honorary Oscar®:W Howard Greene, Harold Rosson, The March Of Time 1937 Picture: The Life Of Emile Zola Director: Leo McCarey, The Awful Truth Actor: Spencer Tracy, Captains Courageous Actress: Luise Rainer, The Good Earth Supporting Actor: Joseph Schildkraut, The Life Of Emile Zola Supporting Actress: Alice Brady, In Old Chicago Original Story:William Wellman, Robert Carson, A Star Is Born Screenplay: Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, Norman Reilly Raine, The Life Of Emile Zola Cinematography: Karl Freund, The Good Earth Art Direction: Stephen Goosson, Lost Horizon Editing: Gene Havlick, Gene Milford, Lost Horizon Original Score: Charles Previn, 100 Men And A Girl Original Song: Harry Owen, ‘Sweet Leilani’, Waikiki Wedding Dance Direction: Hermes Pan, Damsel In Distress Sound:Thomas Moulton, The Hurricane Short Cartoon: The Old Mill 19

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Short One-Reel: Private Life Of Gannetts Short Two-Reel: Torture Money Colour Short: Penny Wisdom Honorary Oscars®: Mack Sennett, Edgar Bergen,W Howard Greene,The Museum of Modern Art Film Library Thalberg Award: Darryl F Zanuck 1938 Picture: You Can’t Take It With You Director: Frank Capra, You Can’t Take It With You Actor: Spencer Tracy, Boys Town Actress: Bette Davis, Jezebel Supporting Actor:Walter Brennan, Kentucky Supporting Actress: Fay Bainter, Jezebel Original Story: Eleonore Griffin, Dore Schary, Boys Town Screenplay: George Bernard Shaw, Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis, W P Lipscombe, Pygmalion Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg, The Great Waltz Art Direction: Carl J Weyl, The Adventures Of Robin Hood Editing: Ralph Dawson, The Adventures Of Robin Hood Original Scoring: Alfred Newman, Alexander’s Ragtime Band Original Score: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, The Adventures Of Robin Hood Original Song: Ralph Bainger, Leo Robin, ‘Thanks For The Memory’, Big Broadcast Of 1938 Sound:Thomas Moulton, The Cowboy And The Lady Short Cartoon: Ferdinand The Bull Short One-Reel: That Mothers Might Live Short Two-Reel: Declaration Of Independence Honorary Oscars®: Deanna Durbin, Mickey Rooney, Harry B Warner,Walt Disney, Oliver Marsh, Allen Davey, J Arthur Ball, special effects team that worked on Spawn Of The North Thalberg Award: Hal B Wallis 1939 Picture: Gone With The Wind Director:Victor Fleming, Gone With The Wind 20

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Actor: Robert Donat, Goodbye Mr Chips Actress:Vivien Leigh, Gone With The Wind Supporting Actor:Thomas Mitchell, Stagecoach Supporting Actress: Hattie McDaniel, Gone With The Wind Original Story: Lewis R Foster, Mr Smith Goes To Washington Screenplay: Sidney Howard, Gone With The Wind Black & White Cinematography: Gregg Toland, Wuthering Heights Colour Cinematography: Ernest Haller, Ray Rennahan, Gone With The Wind Art Direction: Lyle Wheeler, Gone With The Wind Editing: Hal C Kern, James E Newcom, Gone With The Wind Music Score: Richard Hageman, Frank Harling, John Leipold, Leo Shuken, Stagecoach Original Score: Herbert Stothart, The Wizard Of Oz Original Song: Harold Arlen, E Y Harburg, ‘Over the Rainbow’, The Wizard Of Oz Sound: Bernard B Brown, When Tomorrow Comes Special Effects: E H Hanson, Fred Sersen, The Rains Came Short Cartoon: The Ugly Duckling Short One-Reel: Busy Little Bears Short Two-Reel: Sons Of Liberty Honorary Oscars®: Douglas Fairbanks, Judy Garland,William Cameron Menzies,The Motion Picture Relief Fund, Technicolor, Jean Hersholt, Ralph Morgan, Ralph Block Thalberg Award: David O Selznick

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1940 – 1949:The British Are Coming

The ceremony for 1940’s releases again saw a David O Selznick picture up for a whole raft of awards. But Rebecca was unable to mimic Gone With The Wind’s success and instead won only one, albeit Best Picture, of its eleven nominations. Pre-eminent among the unlucky losers was the film’s director, Alfred Hitchcock, who lost out to John Ford for his moving adaptation of Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath. Much has been made of the fact that Hitchcock would never win a competitive Oscar®, which has been used as something of a stick with which to beat the Academy, as ‘evidence’ of its inability to recognise genius over peer popularity or novelty. In fact, it’s as depressing that he was never even nominated for Vertigo (1959) or The Birds (1963), that he didn’t win any of his five actual nominations. But in 1940 he was just a new British director coming off a string of domestic hits, only one of a number of talents who were crossing the Atlantic to make their mark in Hollywood. The Forties saw the start of the Academy’s love-hate relationship with British artists, one that continues to this day. Officially, a film from any country that is shown for a week in Los Angeles is eligible for Oscar® consideration but, like so many in American culture, the Academy rarely looks beyond its own borders. When the Academy does look to Europe in the vast majority of cases it unpacks in 22

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London, takes in the shows and seemingly mislays its collective passport, leaving it unable to travel further. Back west it goes, usually carrying one or two British exports deemed deserving of Academy favour, their makers usually only too happy to be that year’s Oscar® novelty and bearer of the media’s hopes. In fact, the Academy Awards® and the US critical and ticket-buying audiences have established the credentials of a worryingly high number of British and Irish films that went virtually overlooked or were taken for granted in their own backyard. Recently The Crying Game (1993), Howard’s End (1992), Secrets And Lies (1996) and Hilary And Jackie (1998) all suffered from exhibitor and public indifference when first released in the UK, yet all won major Oscar® nominations from a membership that responded to vigorous marketing campaigns in the US. Indeed, the Nineties were something of a vintage decade for the British and Irish contingent with 9 of the 50 films nominated for Best Picture being directed by them, and 11 figuring in the Best Director nominations. 1942 saw the first British nomination for Best Picture. Michael Powell’s 49th Parallel, released in the US as The Invaders, is the story of a stranded U-Boat crew’s attempts to avoid capture having run aground in Canada, and was commissioned by the Ministry of Information as a propaganda device to hasten the US involvement in World War II. Powell himself was not nominated, but his screenwriter and long-time collaborator Emeric Pressburger won the Original Story award. That same year In Which We Serve, another account of military men under pressure, won Noel Coward an honorary Oscar®. Nominally for the range of his creative input into the film – he wrote, starred, and codirected (with David Lean) – it is hard to avoid the feeling that the Academy welcomed the reflected glory of 23

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bestowing an honour upon the definitive Classy Brit. Between 1942 and 1948 British artists and craftsmen accrued nominations for such films as Casablanca (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Brief Encounter (1946), Caesar And Cleopatra (1945) and, most significantly, Great Expectations, which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director (David Lean), and won for cinematography, in 1947. But it was in 1948 that the flirting with British talent flowered into something more permanent – namely, a Best Picture award. Both Lawrence Olivier’s adaptation of Hamlet and Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes received numerous nominations that year and, to the surprise of many, it was Olivier who mounted the podium to pick up the top prize (beating off the highly fancied The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre), just minutes after walking off it clutching a Best Actor statuette. Powell had to be content with having directed the most successful film at the US box office that year, with rentals of five million dollars, a huge success in the Forties. Aside from the British interest, in Oscar® terms the Forties were very much the heyday of what has become known as Classical Hollywood cinema – literate plot and character-led narratives that fitted a three-act structure filmed in a visually economic fashion, unencumbered by stylistic experimentation. These are the films, and the style of film-making, brought to mind when we think of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, and their primary agents were at their creative peak in the Forties. John Ford, William Wyler, Michael Curtiz, Billy Wilder, John Huston and Joseph L Mankiewicz all won Best Director awards during the decade, and all could lay good claim to being genuine auteurs, of having a personal creative vision that was simultaneously popular art. But the Forties also showed that the Academy do not necessarily recognise the very best, even when it is 24

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American, preferring to honour competence of a known quantity, rather than bestow it on youthful genius. This deeply conservative element of the membership asserts itself time and again, but Citizen Kane’s failure at the 1941 awards, despite nine nominations, still rankles as one of the great Oscar® injustices. True, Orson Welles had put many Hollywood noses out of joint by criticising the studios whilst at the same time spending large quantities of RKO’s money (little of which Kane earned back). And his account and portrayal of a deeply flawed media magnate had aroused the wrath of the powerful Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who saw in Kane a less than perfectly concealed account of the life of her boss,William Randolph Hearst. But Citizen Kane was, and remains, a masterpiece of American film that is still tremendously exciting on first viewing. Its narratively complex flashback structure is remarkably smooth and the technical innovations Welles engineered with his cameraman Gregg Toland – one of the worst Oscar® oversights – ensure that Citizen Kane remains a very modern-looking film to watch even to today’s over-stimulated palate. It is a film whose production history and subsequent reception has spawned a miniindustry of its own, and much of the fact, conjecture and gossip are indeed fascinating. But there is a danger that this peripheral noise overshadows the work itself which, when viewed afresh, remains undiminished.

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The Winners 1940 Picture: Rebecca Director: John Ford, The Grapes Of Wrath Actor: James Stewart, The Philadelphia Story Actress: Ginger Rogers, Kitty Foyle Supporting Actor:Walter Brennan, The Westerner Supporting Actress: Jane Darwell, The Grapes Of Wrath Original Story: Benjamin Glazer, John S Toldy, Arise, My Love Screenplay: Donald Ogden Stewart, The Philadelphia Story Original Screenplay: Preston Sturges, The Great McGinty Black & White Cinematography: George Barnes, Rebecca Colour Cinematography: George Perinal, The Thief Of Bagdad Black & White Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Pride And Prejudice Colour Art Direction:Vincent Korda, The Thief Of Bagdad Editing: Anne Bauchens, Northwest Mounted Police Music Score: Alfred Newman, Tin Pan Alley Original Score: Leigh Harline, Paul Smith, Ned Washington, Pinocchio Original Song: Leigh Harline, Ned Washington, ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’, Pinocchio Sound: Douglas Shearer, Strike Up The Band Special Effects: Lawrence Butler, Jack Whitney, The Thief Of Bagdad Short Cartoon: Milky Way Short One-Reel: Quicker ‘n A Wink Short Two-Reel: Teddy,The Rough Rider Honorary Oscars®: Bob Hope, Colonel Nathan Levinson 1941 Picture: How Green Was My Valley Director: John Ford, How Green Was My Valley Actor: Gary Cooper, Sergeant York Actress: Joan Fontaine, Suspicion 26

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Supporting Actor: Donald Crisp, How Green Was My Valley Supporting Actress: Mary Astor, The Great Lie Original Story: Harry Segall, Here Comes Mr Jordan Screenplay: Sidney Buchman, Seton I Miller, Here Comes Mr Jordan Original Screenplay: Herman J Mankiewicz, Orson Welles, Citizen Kane Black & White Cinematography: Arthur Miller, How Green Was My Valley Colour Cinematography: Ernest Palmer, Ray Rennahan, Blood And Sand Black & White Art Direction: Richard Day, Nathan Juran, Thomas A Little, How Green Was My Valley Colour Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Urie McCleary, Edwin B Willis, Blossoms In The Dust Editing:William Holmes, Sergeant York Score, Dramatic: Bernard Herrmann, All That Money Can Buy Score, Musical: Frank Churchill, Oliver Wallace, Dumbo Original Song: Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’, Lady Be Good Sound: Jack Whitney, That Hamilton Woman Special Effects: Farciot Edouart, Gordon Jennings, Louis Mesenkop, I Wanted Wings Short Cartoon: Lend A Paw Short One-Reel: Of Pups And Puzzles Short Two-Reel: Main Street On The March Documentary: Churchill’s Island Honorary Oscars®: Rey Scott, Leopold Stokowski,Walt Disney, the British Ministry of Information Thalberg Award:Walt Disney 1942 Picture: Mrs Miniver Director:William Wyler, Mrs Miniver Actor: James Cagney, Yankee Doodle Dandy Actress: Greer Garson, Mrs Miniver Supporting Actor:Van Heflin, Johnny Eager 27

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Supporting Actress:Teresa Wright, Mrs Miniver Original Story: Emeric Pressburger, The Invaders Screenplay: George Froeschel, James Hilton, Claudine West, Arthur Wimperis, Mrs Miniver Original Screenplay: Michael Kanin, Ring Lardner Jr, Woman Of The Year Black & White Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg, Mrs Miniver Colour Cinematography: Leon Shamroy, The Black Swan Black & White Art Direction: Richard Day, Joseph Wright, Thomas Little, This Above All Colour Art Direction: Richard Day, Joseph Wright,Thomas Little, My Gal Sal Editing: Daniel Mandell, The Pride Of The Yankees Score, Dramatic: Max Steiner, Now Voyager Score, Musical: Ray Heindorf, Heinz Roemheld, Yankee Doodle Dandy Original Song: Irving Berlin, ‘White Christmas’, Holiday Inn Sound: Nathan Levinson, Yankee Doodle Dandy Special Effects: Farciot Edouart, Gordon Jennings,William L Pereira, Louis Mesenkop, Reap The Wild Wind Short Cartoon: Der Fuehrer’s Face Short One-Reel: Speaking Of Animals And Their Families Short Two-Reel: Beyond The Line Of Duty Documentary: The Battle Of Midway, Kokoda Front Line, Moscow Strikes Back, Prelude To War Honorary Oscars®: Charles Boyer, Noel Coward, MGM (for the Andy Hardy films) Thalberg Award: Sidney Franklin 1943 Picture: Casablanca Director: Michael Curtiz, Casablanca Actor: Paul Lukas, Watch On The Rhine Actress: Jennifer Jones, The Song Of Bernadette Supporting Actor: Charles Coburn, The More The Merrier Supporting Actress: Katina Paxinou, For Whom The Bell Tolls Original Story:William Saroyan, The Human Comedy 28

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Screenplay: Julius J Epstein, Philip G Epstein, Howard Koch, Casablanca Original Screenplay: Norman Krasna, Princess O’Rourke Black & White Cinematography: Arthur Miller, The Song Of Bernadette Colour Cinematography: Hal Mohr,W Howard Greene, The Phantom Of The Opera Black & White Art Direction: James Basevi,William Darling, Thomas Little, The Song Of Bernadette Colour Art Direction: Alexander Golitzen, John B Goodman, Russell A Gausman, Ira S Webb, The Phantom Of The Opera Editing: George Amy, Air Force Score, Dramatic or Comedy: Alfred Newman, The Song Of Bernadette Score, Musical: Ray Heindorf, This Is The Army Original Song: Harry Warren, Mack Gordon, ‘You’ll Never Know’, Hello, Frisco, Hello Sound: Stephen Dunne, This Land Is Mine Special Effects: Fred Sersen, Roger Heman, Crash Dive Short Cartoon: Yankee Doodle Mouse Short One-Reel: Amphibious Fighters Short Two-Reel: Heavenly Music Documentary Feature: Desert Victory Honorary Oscars®: George Pal Thalberg Award: Hal B Wallis 1944 Picture: Going My Way Director: Leo McCarey, Going My Way Actor: Bing Crosby, Going My Way Actress: Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight Supporting Actor: Barry Fitzgerald, Going My Way Supporting Actress: Ethel Barrymore, None But The Lonely Heart Original Story: Leo McCarey, Going My Way Screenplay: Frank Butler, Frank Cavatt, Going My Way Original Screenplay: Lamar Trotti, Wilson Black & White Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle, Laura 29

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Colour Cinematography: Leon Shamroy, Wilson Black & White Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons,William Ferrari, Edwin B Willis, Paul Huldschinsky, Gaslight Colour Art Direction:Wiard Ihnen,Thomas Little, Wilson Editing: Barbara McLean, Wilson Score, Dramatic: Max Steiner, Since You Went Away Score, Musical: Carmen Dragon, Morris Stoloff, Cover Girl Original Song: James Van Heusen, Johnny Burke, ‘Swinging On A Star’, Going My Way Sound: E H Hansen, Wilson Special Effects: Arnold Gillespie, Donald Jahraus,Warren Newcombe, Douglas Shearer, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo Short Cartoon: Mouse Trouble Short One-Reel: Who’s Who In Animal Land Short Two-Reel: I Won’t Play Documentary Feature: The Fighting Lady Documentary Short: With The Marines At Tarawa Honorary Oscars®: Margaret O’Brien, Bob Hope Thalberg Award: Darryl F Zanuck 1945 Picture: The Lost Weekend Director: Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend Actor: Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend Actress: Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce Supporting Actor: James Dunn, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Supporting Actress: Anne Revere, National Velvet Original Story: Charles G Booth, The House On 92nd Street Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend Original Screenplay: Richard Schweizer, Marie-Louise Black & White Cinematography: Harry Stradling, The Picture Of Dorian Gray Colour Cinematography: Leon Shamroy, Leave Her To Heaven Black & White Art Direction:Wiard Ihnen, A Roland Fields, Blood On The Sun Colour Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegte, Sam Comer, Frenchman’s Creek 30

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Editing: Robert J Kern, National Velvet Score, Dramatic: Miklos Rosza, Spellbound Score, Musical: Georgie Stoll, Anchors Away Original Song: Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein II, ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’, State Fair Sound: Stephen Dunne, Bells Of St Mary’s Special Effects: John Fulton, A W Johns, Wonder Man Short Cartoon: Quiet Please Short One-Reel: Stairway To Light Short Two-Reel: Star In The Night Documentary Feature: The True Glory Documentary Short: Hitler Lives? Honorary Oscars®: The House I Live In,Walter Wagner, Peggy Ann Garner, Republic Studio Sound Dept 1946 Picture: The Best Years Of Our Lives Director:William Wyler, The Best Years Of Our Lives Actor: Fredric March, The Best Years Of Our Lives Actress: Olivia de Havilland, To Each His Own Supporting Actor: Harold Russell, The Best Years Of Our Lives Supporting Actress: Anne Baxter, The Razor’s Edge Original Story: Clemence Dane, Vacation From Marriage Screenplay: Robert E Sherwood, The Best Years Of Our Lives Original Screenplay: Muriel Box, Sidney Box, The Seventh Veil Black & White Cinematography: Arthur Miller, Anna And The King Of Siam Colour Cinematography: Charles Rosher, Leonard Smith, Arthur Arling, The Yearling Black & White Art Direction: Lyle Wheeler,William Darling, Thomas Little, Frank E Hughes, Anna And The King Of Siam Colour Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B Willis, The Yearling Editing: Daniel Mandell, The Best Years Of Our Lives Score, Dramatic: Hugo Friedhofer, The Best Years Of Our Lives Score, Musical: Morris Stoloff, The Jolson Story 31

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Original Song: Harry Warren, Johnny Mercer, ‘On The Atchison,Topeka And Sante Fe’, The Harvey Girls Sound: John Livadary, The Jolson Story Special Effects:Thomas Howard, Blithe Spirit Short Cartoon: The Cat Concerto Short One-Reel: Facing Your Danger Short Two-Reel: A Boy And His Dog Documentary Short: Seeds Of Destiny Honorary Oscars®: Laurence Olivier, Harold Russell, Ernst Lubitsch, Claude Jarman Jr Thalberg Award: Samuel Goldwyn 1947 Picture: Gentleman’s Agreement Director: Elia Kazan, Gentleman’s Agreement Actor: Ronald Colman, A Double Life Actress: Loretta Young, The Farmer’s Daughter Supporting Actor: Edmund Gwenn, Miracle On 34th Street Supporting Actress: Celeste Holm, Gentleman’s Agreement Original Story:Valentine Davies, Miracle On 34th Street Screenplay: George Seaton, Miracle On 34th Street Original Screenplay: Sidney Sheldon, The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer Black & White Cinematography: Guy Green, Great Expectations Colour Cinematography: Jack Cardiff, Black Narcissus Black & White Art Direction: John Bryan,Wilfred Shingleton, Great Expectations Colour Art Direction: Alfred Junge, Black Narcissus Editing: Francis Lyon, Robert Parrish, Body And Soul Score, Dramatic: Miklos Rosza, A Double Life Score, Musical: Alfred Newman, Mother Wore Tights Original Song: Allie Wrubel, Ray Gilbert, ‘Zip-A-Dee-DooDah’, Song Of The South Sound: Gordon Sawyer, The Bishop’s Wife Special Effects: A Arnold Gillespie,Warren Newcombe, Douglas Shearer, Michael Steinore, Green Dolphin Street Short Cartoon: Tweetie Pie 32

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Short One-Reel: Goodbye Miss Turlock Short Two-Reel: Climbing The Matterhorn Documentary Feature: Design For Death Documentary Short: First Steps Honorary Oscars®: James Baskett, Bill and Coo, Shoeshine, Col William N Selig, Albert E Smith,Thomas Armat, George K Spoor 1948 Picture: Hamlet Director: John Huston, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Actor: Laurence Olivier, Hamlet Actress: Jane Wyman, Johnny Belinda Supporting Actor:Walter Huston, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Supporting Actress: Claire Trevor, Key Largo Original Story: Richard Schweizer, David Wechsler, The Search Screenplay: John Huston, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Black & White Cinematography:William Daniels, The Naked City Colour Cinematography: Joseph Valentine,William V Skall, Winton C Hoch, Joan Of Arc Black & White Art Direction: Roger K Furse, Carmen Dillon, Hamlet Colour Art Direction: Hein Heckroth, Arthur Lawson, The Red Shoes Black & White Costume Design: Roger K Furse, Hamlet Colour Costume Design: Dorothy Jeakins, Karinska, Joan Of Arc Editing: Paul Weatherwax, The Naked City Score, Dramatic: Brian Easdale, The Red Shoes Score, Musical: Johnny Green, Roger Edens, Easter Parade Original Song: Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, ‘Buttons And Bows’, The Paleface Sound:Thomas Moulton, the 20th Century Fox Sound Dept, The Snake Pit 33

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Special Effects: Paul Eagler, J McMillan Johnson, Russell Shearman, Clarence Silver, Charles Freeman, James G Stewart, Portrait Of Jennie Short Cartoon: The Little Orphans Short One-Reel: Symphony Of A City Short Two-Reel: Seal Island Documentary Feature: The Secret Land Documentary Short: Toward Independence Honorary Oscars®: Monsieur Verdoux, Ivan Jandl, Sid Grauman, Adolph Zukor,Walter Wanger Thalberg Award: Jerry Wald 1949 Picture: All The King’s Men Director: Joseph L Mankiewicz, A Letter To Three Wives Actor: Broderick Crawford, All The King’s Men Actress: Olivia de Havilland, The Heiress Supporting Actor: Dean Jagger, 12 O’Clock High Supporting Actress: Mercedes McCambridge, All The King’s Men Original Story: Douglas Morrow, The Stratton Story Screenplay: Joseph L Mankiewicz, A Letter To Three Wives Story & Screenplay: Robert Pirosh, Battleground Black & White Cinematography: Paul C Vogel, Battleground Colour Cinematography:Winton Hoch, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon Black & White Art Direction: John Meehan, Harry Horner, Emile Kuri, The Heiress Colour Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B Willis, Jack D Moore, Little Women Black & White Costume Design: Edith Head, Gile Steele, The Heiress Colour Costume Design: Leah Rhodes,Travilla, Marjorie Best, The Adventures Of Don Juan Editing: Harry Gerstad, Champion Score, Dramatic: Aaron Copland, The Heiress Score, Musical: Roger Edens, Lennie Hayton, On The Town 34

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Original Song: Frank Loesser, ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, Neptune’s Daughter Sound:Thomas Moulton, the 20th Century Fox Sound Dept, 12 O’Clock High Special Effects:Willis O’Brien, Mighty Joe Young Short Cartoon: For Scent-imental Reasons Short One-Reel: Aquatic House Party Short Two-Reel: Van Gogh Documentary Feature: Daybreak In Udi Documentary Short: A Chance To Live; So Much For So Little (tie) Honorary Oscars®: The Bicycle Thief, Bobby Driscoll, Fred Astaire, Cecil B DeMille, Jean Hersholt

35

1950 – 1959: Oscar®, Politics And The Blacklist

The most significant stylistic movement to emerge from Hollywood during the Forties was that which became known as Film Noir. Simply put, Noir was in many ways the direct result of World War II. The conflict in Europe drove many of Germany’s most innovative film-makers, a number of them of Jewish origin, west to America, where they sought to establish themselves in English-language cinema. With them they brought their own working methods, cultural experiences and narrative preoccupations. Whereas indigenous American cinema (insofar as there was such a thing) was, as already noted, plot-driven and visually economic, the home-grown films of, amongst others, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder and Max Ophuls were elaborately designed in the Gothic tradition, and often foregrounded the psychology – not to say pathology – of the characters over plot considerations. In his Pocket Essential to Film Noir (2000), Paul Duncan identifies the influence of French cinema on the filmmakers in flight. A great many rested in Paris after fleeing Germany at a time when independent French film-makers such as Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier were emerging as part of the Poetic Realist movement. The Poetic Realists had lived through a surge of optimism in France under a left of centre government, only to be crushed by disap36

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pointment at its failure and the seemingly inevitable European war that loomed. As the fleeing German filmmakers arrived in France in the late Thirties, they were exposed to such Poetic Realist films as Pépé Le Moko (Duvivier, 1936) and La Règle Du Jeu (Renoir, 1939) that insisted on the triumph of a corrupt system over the individual. Arriving in Hollywood, directors who had been used to having every element of the film-making process at their disposal in Europe found themselves being offered lowbudget crime stories or melodramas, adapted from the bestselling fiction of the day. This combination of cultural difference, pessimistic outlook and straightened economic circumstance resulted in such landmarks of Forties cinema as Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944) and Woman In The Window (Lang, 1944). But it wasn’t just émigré directors who fashioned Film Noir as a recognisable style. Hollywood stalwart Howard Hawks directed the ultimate private-eye movie, The Big Sleep (1941) and with it created another of the movement’s defining elements, that of the femme fatale (in this case, a young Lauren Bacall). As well as reflecting the backgrounds and creative circumstances of those who made Film Noir, the films also reflect the anxieties of post-War America. Immediately after the end of hostilities, America began another conflict – the Cold War. America was a changed society from that which had gone to war.Women had left the home and taken jobs in industry in order to forward the war effort. Their husbands came home and, insecure of their place in this new world, felt threatened by women’s economic independence and wanted their jobs back. Having defeated Nazism in Europe, the US became obsessed with the Communist ‘threat’ and took refuge in the reassertion of social conformity and family values. Film Noir fed on these 37

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tensions and in the Fifties the movement thrived, with Fritz Lang alone directing such notable Noirs as While The City Sleeps (1953), Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1953) and The Big Heat (1951). How did the Oscars® respond to Film Noir, and the political undertones implicit in these and other post-War Hollywood films? Double Indemnity received nominations for Best Picture, Director and Actress (Barbara Stanwyck) in 1944. The Academy voted serious ‘issue’ movies the Best Picture in four of the next five years – The Lost Weekend (Wilder, 1945), The Best Years Of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946), Gentleman’s Agreement (Kazan, 1947) and All The King’s Men (Rossen, 1949). All of these movies tackled social issues such as alcoholism, returning soldiers, anti-Semitism and political corruption, and, although not party political, all suggested a left-leaning, liberal artistic community in Hollywood. But society at large began to impinge on the Oscars® in the late Forties when Washington initiated the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and, recognising the influence of the entertainment industry at large, targeted Hollywood and those artists believed to be possessing Communist sympathies.A group of directors and screenwriters, who became known as the ‘Hollywood Ten’, were subpoenaed to appear before the hearings in 1947. They all refused to discuss their political views and were sentenced to a year in prison and ‘blacklisted’ by an industry that felt powerless in the face of mounting anti-Communist hysteria. The first direct effect of this on the Oscars® was the embarrassment to the Academy of having Crossfire, a tense Film Noir produced and directed by two of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ (Adrian Scott and Edward Dymtryk, respectively) nominated for Best Picture and Director at the 1947 Awards. Neither man won, Dymtryk ironically losing 38

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out to Elia Kazan, who would play a notorious role in Hollywood politics of the Fifties. And, although the Academy continued to acknowledge strong work with liberal leanings in the Forties, the people responsible for that work were often left out in the cold. Robert Rossen was nominated for, but didn’t win, Best Director for All The King’s Men in 1949, despite the fact that the film was voted Best Picture. But by the turn of the Fifties, the Oscars® were not quite so defiant.The second sitting of HUAC, under the auspices of the ambitious and rabidly anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy, began in March 1951, with the thencurrent crop of issue-driven movies and Film Noir thrillers cited as ‘evidence’ of a Red Menace abroad in the Hollywood hills. In the face of a second, more concerted onslaught, the Academy acquiesced, ushering in a decade honouring some of the most banal films ever to win major awards. And, worse, in 1957 the Academy enacted a rule whereby any individual who had refused to appear or cooperate with HUAC, or had admitted membership of the Communist Party, was forbade an Oscar® nomination. During the months of the HUAC’s second sitting over 200 people were ‘blacklisted’ and their careers either stalled or completely ended. Both Edward Dymtryk and Robert Rossen, who had toughed it out in 1947, chose to cooperate with the Committee second time around in order to re-enter the industry, incriminating several colleagues in the process. The most significant appearance before the Committee in 1951 was that of Elia Kazan, a director of socially responsible pictures who had already won an Oscar®, for Gentleman’s Agreement. His decision to name names, appearing before the Committee twice, was a major blow to the liberals within Hollywood, who felt betrayed by one of their own. Kazan’s subsequent virtual canonisation by 39

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the Academy, who nominated him as Best Director three times in the Fifties and once more in 1963, is something that Hollywood has never come to terms with. Those sympathetic to him believe him to have been sincere in his repudiation of his leftist past, while others have never forgiven what they perceive as a cynical and destructive act by one so influential. This ambivalence was evident during the 1998 ceremony when Kazan appeared on stage to accept a Lifetime Achievement award. While some in the audience stood and applauded, a significant minority sat on their hands and glared at the shrunken figure on the platform. The absurd anti-Communist rule of 1957 did not last long, as industry practice and pseudonyms soon made a mockery of it. While officially blacklisted, screenwriter Michael Wilson won an Oscar® in 1951 for A Place In The Sun.The following year, both he and fellow blacklistee Carl Foreman were nominated (for Five Fingers and High Noon, respectively), although neither won. In 1957 the two collaborated and won for The Bridge On The River Kwai, although the credit was officially given to the author of the original story, Pierre Boulle. And in 1958 when screenwriter ‘Robert Rich’ won Best Story for The Brave One, he didn’t turn up to claim the award.This is because Rich was the pseudonym of Dalton Trumbo, one of the original ‘Hollywood Ten’, by then based in Germany. But the situation came to a head when another blacklisted writer, Nathan E Douglas, seemed likely to be nominated, as ‘Ned Young’, for the screenplay of the highly-acclaimed antiracist picture The Defiant Ones (1958). Just months after introducing the ruling, the Academy rescinded it, claiming it ‘unworkable’. Kazan’s On The Waterfront swept the board at the 1955 ceremony, winning eight Oscars®. It is an irony of sorts that it is arguably the best of the decade’s Best Pictures, but it has 40

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not gone unacknowledged that it is the story of an individual who stands alone against union corruption, and it is not difficult to read it as a ‘pro-informing’ text – especially so given that the screenplay was written by fellow informer Budd Schulberg. As for the other big winners in the Fifties, only a couple really stand out. Joseph L Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950) is a delightful example of the Classical Hollywood cinema discussed in the previous chapter, albeit one with superior technique. It also has the virtue, in Oscar® terms, of being about show business, the story of two actresses, one at the beginning, the other towards the end, of their careers. 1957 was the year of the second British Best Picture, David Lean’s epic The Bridge On The River Kwai.This was the first of Lean’s self-consciously epic pictures, the type for which he would become famous, synthesising fine acting with sweeping visual flair and emotional impact. Alec Guinness was never better than as the leader of a group of British Prisoners of War who takes on the job of building a bridge for their Japanese captors as a means of restoring the morale of his charges. His performance may now be regarded as something of an archetype, but is more moving than the film’s monolithic reputation allows. The other Best Pictures of the decade are, to a greater or lesser degree, decent enough entertainments. One significant step forward that the Academy did take was to instigate a Foreign Film award, after rewarding significant achievements from abroad with honorary Oscars® for a number of years. The first winners – Federico Fellini, Jacques Tati, Ingmar Bergman – were certainly heavy hitters and the films themselves often considerable achievements. But the Fifties generally are marked by the Academy concertedly overlooking serious artistic statements of lasting stature, such as High Noon (1951), in favour of 41

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anodyne crowd pleasers in order to draw political sting. In this way it may only have been mirroring American society as a whole, but the scarcity of films with almost any edge whatsoever from the Oscar® roll-call during this period is a testament all by itself.

The Winners 1950 Picture: All About Eve Director: Joseph L Mankiewicz, All About Eve Actor: José Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac Actress: Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday Supporting Actor: George Sanders, All About Eve Supporting Actress: Josephine Hull, Harvey Original Story: Edna Anhalt, Edward Anhalt, Panic In The Streets Screenplay: Joseph L Mankiewicz, All About Eve Story & Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D M Marshman Jr, Sunset Boulevard Black & White Cinematography: Robert Krasker, The Third Man Colour Cinematography: Robert Surtees, King Solomon’s Mines Black & White Art Direction: Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer, Ray Moyer, Sunset Boulevard Colour Art Direction: Hans Dreier,Walter Tyler, Sam Comer, Ray Moyer, Samson And Delilah Black & White Costume Design: Edith Head, Charles LeMaire, All About Eve Colour Costume Design: Edith Head, Dorothy Jeakins, Elois Jenssen, Gile Steele, Gwen Wakelling, Samson And Delilah Editing: Ralph Winters, Conrad A Nervig, King Solomon’s Mines Score, Dramatic: Franz Waxman, Sunset Boulevard Score, Musical: Adolph Deutsch, Roger Edens, Annie Get Your Gun 42

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Original Song: Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, ‘Mona Lisa’, Captain Carey USA Sound:Thomas Moulton, All About Eve Special Effects: Lee Zavitz, George Pal, Destination Moon Short Cartoon: Gerald McBoing Boing Short One-Reel: Granddad Of Races Short Two-Reel: In Beaver Valley Documentary Feature: The Titan: Story Of Michelangelo Documentary Short: Why Korea? Honorary Oscars®: The Walls Of Malapaga, George Murphy, Louis B Mayer Thalberg Award: Darryl F Zanuck 1951 Picture: An American In Paris Director: George Stevens, A Place In The Sun Actor: Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen Actress:Vivien Leigh, A Streetcar Named Desire Supporting Actor: Karl Malden, A Streetcar Named Desire Supporting Actress: Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire Original Story: Paul Dehn, James Bernard, Seven Days To Noon Screenplay: Michael Wilson, Harry Brown, A Place In The Sun Story & Screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner, An American In Paris Black & White Cinematography:William C Mellor, A Place In The Sun Colour Cinematography: Alfred Gilks, John Alton, An American In Paris Black & White Art Direction: Richard Day, George James Hopkins, A Streetcar Named Desire Colour Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Preston Ames, Edwin B Willis, Keogh Gleason, An American In Paris Black & White Costume Design: Edith Head, A Place In The Sun Colour Costume Design: Orry-Kelly,Walter Plunkett, Irene Sharaff, An American In Paris Editing:William Hornbeck, A Place In The Sun Score, Dramatic: Franz Waxman, A Place In The Sun 43

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Score, Musical: Johnny Green, Saul Chaplin, An American In Paris Original Song: Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, ‘In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening’, Here Comes The Groom Sound: Douglas Shearer, The Great Caruso Special Effects: Paramount Special Effects Dept, When Worlds Collide Short Cartoon: The Two Mousketeers Short One-Reel: World Of Kids Short Two-Reel: Nature’s Half Acre Documentary Feature: Kon Tiki Documentary Short: Benjy Honorary Oscars®: Rashomon, Gene Kelly Thalberg Award: Arthur Freed 1952 Picture: The Greatest Show On Earth Director: John Ford, The Quiet Man Actor: Gary Cooper, High Noon Actress: Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba Supporting Actor: Anthony Quinn, Viva Zapata! Supporting Actress: Gloria Grahame, The Bad And The Beautiful Original Story: Frederic M Frank,Theodore St John, Frank Cavett, The Greatest Show On Earth Screenplay: Charles M Schnee, The Bad And The Beautiful Story & Screenplay:T E B Clark, The Lavender Hill Mob Black & White Cinematography: Robert Surtees, The Bad And The Beautiful Colour Cinematography:Winton Hoch, Archie Stout, The Quiet Man Black & White Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Edward Carfagno, Edwin B Willis, Keogh Gleason, The Bad And The Beautiful Colour Art Direction: Paul Sheriff, Marcel Vertes, Moulin Rouge Black & White Costume Design: Helen Rose, The Bad And The Beautiful Colour Costume Design: Marcel Vertes, Moulin Rouge 44

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Editing: Elmo Williams, Harry Gerstad, High Noon Score, Dramatic: Dimitri Tiomkin, High Noon Score, Musical: Alfred Newman, With A Song In My Heart Original Song: Dimitri Tiomkin, Ned Washington, ‘High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin’)’, High Noon Sound: London Films Sound Dept, Breaking The Sound Barrier (UK title: The Sound Barrier) Special Effects: A Arnold Gillespie, Plymouth Adventure Short Cartoon: Johann Mouse Short One-Reel: Light In The Window Short Two-Reel: Water Birds Documentary Feature: The Sea Around Us Documentary Short: Neighbours Honorary Oscars®: Forbidden Games, Bob Hope, Harold Lloyd, Merion C Cooper, Joseph M Schenck, George Alfred Mitchell Thalberg Award: Cecil B DeMille 1953 Picture: From Here To Eternity Director: Fred Zinneman, From Here To Eternity Actor:William Holden, Stalag 17 Actress: Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday Supporting Actor: Frank Sinatra, From Here To Eternity Supporting Actress: Donna Reed, From Here To Eternity Original Story: Ian McLellan Hunter, Roman Holiday Screenplay: Daniel Taradash, From Here To Eternity Story & Screenplay: Charles Brackett,Walter Reisch, Richard Breen, Titanic Black & White Cinematography: Burnett Guffey, From Here To Eternity Colour Cinematography: Loyal Griggs, Shane Black & White Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Edward Carfagno, Edwin B Willis, Hugh Hunt, Julius Caesar Colour Art Direction: Lyle Wheeler, George W Davis,Walter M Scott, Paul S Fox, The Robe Black & White Costume Design: Edith Head, Roman Holiday 45

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Colour Costume Design: Charles LeMaire, Emile Santiago, The Robe Editing:William Lyon, From Here To Eternity Score, Dramatic: Bronislau Kaper, Lili Score, Musical: Alfred Newman, Call Me Madam Original Song: Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster, ‘Secret Love’, Calamity Jane Sound: John P Livadary, the Columbia Sound Dept, From Here To Eternity Special Effects: Paramount Studios Effects Dept, War Of The Worlds Short Cartoon: Toot,Whistle, Plunk And Boom Short One-Reel: The Merry Wives Of Windsor Overture Short Two-Reel: Bear Country Documentary Feature: The Living Desert Documentary Short: The Alaskan Eskimo Honorary Oscars®: Pete Smith, Joseph Breen, Bell and Howell, 20th Century Fox Thalberg Award: George Stevens 1954 Picture: On The Waterfront Director: Elia Kazan, On The Waterfront Actor: Marlon Brando, On The Waterfront Actress: Grace Kelly, The Country Girl Supporting Actor: Edmond O’Brien, The Barefoot Contessa Supporting Actress: Eva Marie Saint, On The Waterfront Original Story: Philip Yordan, Broken Lance Screenplay: George Seaton, The Country Girl Story & Screenplay: Budd Schulberg, On The Waterfront Black & White Cinematography: Boris Kaufman, On The Waterfront Colour Cinematography: Milton Krasner, Three Coins In The Fountain Black & White Art Direction: Richard Day, On The Waterfront Colour Art Direction: John Meehan, Emile Kuri, 20,000 46

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Leagues Under The Sea Black & White Costume Design: Edith Head, Sabrina Colour Costume Design: Sanzo Wada, Gate Of Hell Editing: Gene Milford, On The Waterfront Score, Dramatic: Dimitri Tiomkin, The High And The Mighty Score, Musical: Adolph Deutsch, Saul Chaplin, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers Original Song: Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, ‘Three Coins In The Fountain’, Three Coins In The Fountain Sound: Leslie I Carey, The Glenn Miller Story Special Effects: Disney Studios, 20,000 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea Short Cartoon: When Magoo Flew Short One-Reel: This Mechanical Age Short Two-Reel: A Time Out Of War Documentary Feature: The Vanishing Prairie Documentary Short: Thursday’s Children Honorary Oscars®: Gate Of Hell, Bausch and Lomb Optical Company, Kemp R Niver, Greta Garbo, Danny Kaye, Jon Whitely,Vincent Winter 1955 Picture: Marty Director: Delbert Mann, Marty Actor: Ernest Borgnine, Marty Actress: Anna Magnani, The Rose Tattoo Supporting Actor: Jack Lemmon, Mr Roberts Supporting Actress: Jo Van Fleet, East Of Eden Original Story: Daniel Fuchs, Love Me Or Leave Me Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky, Marty Story & Screenplay:William Ludwig, Sonya Levien, Interrupted Melody Black & White Cinematography: James Wong Howe, The Rose Tattoo Colour Cinematography: Robert Burks, To Catch A Thief Black & White Art Direction: Hal Pereira,Tambi Larsen, Sam Comer, Arthur Krams, The Rose Tattoo 47

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Colour Art Direction:William Flannery, Jo Mielziner, Robert Priestly, Picnic Black & White Costume Design: Helen Rose, I’ll Cry Tomorrow Colour Costume Design: Charles LeMaire, Love Is A ManySplendored Thing Editing: Charles Nelson,William Lyon, Picnic Score, Dramatic: Alfred Newman, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing Score, Musical: Robert Russell Bennett, Jay Blackton, Adolph Deutsch, Oklahoma! Original Song: Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster, ‘Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing’, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing Sound: Fred Hynes, Oklahoma! Special Effects: Paramount Special Effects Dept, The Bridges At Toko-Ri Short Cartoon: Speedy Gonzales Short One-Reel: Survival City Short Two-Reel: The Face Of Lincoln Documentary Feature: Helen Keller Her Story Documentary Short: Men Against The Arctic Honorary Oscars®: Seven Samurai,The Legend Of Musashi 1956 Picture: Around The World In 80 Days Director: George Stevens, Giant Actor:Yul Brynner, The King And I Actress: Ingrid Bergman, Anastasia Supporting Actor: Anthony Quinn, Lust For Life Supporting Actress: Dorothy Malone, Written On The Wind Story: Robert Rich (aka Dalton Trumbo), The Brave One Original Screenplay: Albert Lamorisse, The Red Balloon Adapted Screenplay: James Poe, John Farrow, S J Perelman, Around The World In 80 Days Black & White Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg, Somebody Up There Likes Me Colour Cinematography: Lionel Lindon, Around The World In 80 Days 48

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Black & White Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm F Brown, Edwin B Willis, Keogh Gleason, Somebody Up There Likes Me Colour Art Direction: Lyle R Wheeler, John DeCuir,Walter M Scott, Paul S Fox, The King And I Black & White Costume Design: Jean-Louis, The Solid Gold Cadillac Colour Costume Design: Irene Sharaff, The King And I Sound: Carl Faulkner, The King And I Special Effects: John Fulton, The Ten Commandments Editing: Gene Ruggiero, Paul Weatherwax, Around The World In 80 Days Foreign Film: La Strada (Federico Fellini), Italy Score, Dramatic:Victor Young, Around The World In 80 Days Score, Musical: Alfred Newman, Ken Darby, The King And I Original Song: Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, ‘Que Sera, Sera’, The Man Who Knew Too Much Short Cartoon: Mister Magoo’s Puddle Jumper Short One-Reel: Crashing The Water Barrier Short Two-Reel: The Bespoke Overcoat Documentary Feature: The Silent World Documentary Short: The True Story Of The Civil War Honorary Oscars®: Eddie Cantor Thalberg Award: Buddy Adler Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award:Y Frank Freeman 1957 Picture: The Bridge On The River Kwai Director: David Lean, The Bridge On The River Kwai Actor: Alec Guinness, The Bridge On The River Kwai Actress: Joanne Woodward, The Three Faces Of Eve Supporting Actor: Red Buttons, Sayonara Supporting Actress: Miyoshi Umeki, Sayonara Original Screenplay: George Wells, Designing Woman Adapted Screenplay: Pierre Boulle, The Bridge On The River Kwai Cinematography: Jack Hildyard, The Bridge On The River Kwai 49

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Art Direction:Ted Haworth, Robert Priestly, Sayonara Costume Design: Orry-Kelly, Les Girls Sound: George Groves, Sayonara Special Effects:Walter Rossi, The Enemy Below Editing: Peter Taylor, The Bridge On The River Kwai Foreign Film: The Nights Of Cabiria (Federico Fellini), Italy Score: Malcolm Arnold, The Bridge On The River Kwai Original Song: James Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, ‘All The Way’, The Joker Is Wild Short Cartoon: Birds Anonymous Short Live Action: The Wetback Hound Documentary Feature: Albert Schweitzer Honorary Oscars®: Gilbert ‘Bronco Billy’ Anderson, Charles Brackett, B B Kahane,The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Samuel Goldwyn 1958 Picture: Gigi Director:Vincente Minnelli, Gigi Actor: David Niven, Separate Tables Actress: Susan Hayward, I Want To Live! Supporting Actor: Burl Ives, The Big Country Supporting Actress:Wendy Hiller, Separate Tables Original Screenplay: Nedrick Young, Harold Jacob Smith, The Defiant Ones Adapted Screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner, Gigi Black & White Cinematography: Sam Leavitt, The Defiant Ones Colour Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg, Gigi Art Direction:William Horning, Preston Ames, Henry Grace, Keogh Gleason, Gigi Costume Design: Cecil Beaton, Gigi Sound: Fred Hynes, South Pacific Special Effects:Tom Howard, tom thumb Editing: Adrienne Fazan, Gigi Foreign Film: Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati), France Score, Dramatic: Dimitri Tiomkin, The Old Man And The Sea 50

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Score, Musical: André Prévin, Gigi Original Song: Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner, ‘Gigi’, Gigi Short Cartoon: Knighty, Knight, Bugs Short Live Action: Grand Canyon Documentary Feature: White Wilderness Documentary Short: Ama Girls Honorary Oscars®: Maurice Chevalier Thalberg Award: Jack L Warner 1959 Picture: Ben-Hur Director:William Wyler, Ben-Hur Actor: Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur Actress: Simone Signoret, Room At The Top Supporting Actor: Hugh Griffith, Ben-Hur Supporting Actress: Shelley Winters, The Diary Of Anne Frank Original Screenplay: Russell Rouse, Clarence Greene, Stanley Shapiro, Maurice Richlin, Pillow Talk Adapted Screenplay: Neil Paterson, Room At The Top Black & White Cinematography:William C Mellor, The Diary Of Anne Frank Colour Cinematography: Robert L Surtees, Ben-Hur Black & White Art Direction: Lyle R Wheeler, George W Davis,Walter M Scott, Stuart A Reiss, The Diary Of Anne Frank Colour Art Direction:William A Horning, Edward Carfagno, Hugh Hunt, Ben-Hur Black & White Costume Design: Orry-Kelly, Some Like It Hot Colour Costume Design: Elizabeth Haffenden, Ben-Hur Sound: Franklin E Milton, Ben-Hur Special Effects: Arnold Gillespie, Robert MacDonald, Milo Lory, Ben-Hur Editing: Ralph E Winters, John Dunning, Ben-Hur Foreign Film: Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus), France Score, Dramatic: Miklos Rosza, Ben-Hur Score, Musical: André Prévin, Ken Darby, Porgy And Bess 51

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Original Song: James Van Neusen, Sammy Cahn, ‘High Hopes’, A Hole In The Head Short Cartoon: Moonbird Short Live Action: The Golden Fish Documentary Feature: Serengeti Shall Not Die Documentary Short: Glass Honorary Oscars®: Lee de Forest, Buster Keaton Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Bob Hope

52

1960 – 1969:The Decline Of The Studio System

The Fifties had ended with William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) sweeping the board at the Oscars® and taking eleven awards, a record that still stands (although it was recently matched) today.The ideal Oscar® movie, Ben-Hur is simpleminded escapism dressed up as drama and is, as such, particularly characteristic of the awards in the Fifties. Some of the best pictures of 1959 were rather more entertaining and had fewer pretensions to importance, and they were duly not even in the running.They included Hitchcock’s definitive caper movie North By Northwest and Billy Wilder’s much loved signature film Some Like It Hot. The following year, and not for the last time, the Academy decided to make amends and honour a picture made by film-makers recently overlooked. Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), a sort of American Beauty (1999) of its day, won the top honours. Wilder himself won a unique triple-whammy of Oscars® for producing, directing and co-writing a, for its time, somewhat risqué portrait of an ambitious clerk renting out his apartment to his colleagues for clandestine encounters. But the overlooked director that the Academy should have been honouring in 1960 was Alfred Hitchcock. After suffering a dip in fortunes in the late Forties and early Fifties with films of variable quality that were, in some 53

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cases, box-office disasters, from the mid-Fifties onwards Hitchcock put together a sustained run that is as impressive a record as any in cinema history. Rear Window (1954), To Catch A Thief (1955), Vertigo (1958) and North By Northwest (1959) were just four. And if some of the others are less impressive – The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955), The Trouble With Harry (1956) and The Wrong Man (1957) – the whole list nonetheless represents a sheer consistency that is perhaps only matched in American cinema by Woody Allen. By the turn of the decade, Hitchcock had noted the popularity of new developments in horror movies. From Britain had escaped the first of the Hammer Horrors, The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror Of Dracula (1958), with their lurid colours and heavy sexual undertones. In the US a complementary crop of zero-budget exploitation movies, best represented by the work of producer Roger Corman at American International Pictures (AIP), had mixed horror and comedy (in such films as A Bucket Of Blood, 1959) to startling financial success. Hitchcock recognised that he would not be able to contribute to this trend using the lavish budgets he had become accustomed to working with, and offered to Paramount, his sponsoring studio, to shoot a movie on a tight schedule and with the crew of his TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. When Paramount, appalled at his choice of material, refused to allow him to shoot on their lot, the director took the project to Universal, where he spent the remainder of his career. This preamble to what would, of course, become Psycho (1960), arguably Hitchcock’s singular masterpiece, is instructive of the state of the US film industry at the beginning of the decade.The Fifties had witnessed the growth of television in American homes (indeed the first Academy 54

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Awards® to be broadcast on TV was in 1952), much to the panic of studio heads. Faced with both the novelty of home entertainment, and the increasing quality of what was being shown on TV, cinema audiences had chosen to stay at home, and box-office takings had gone into decline in the early Fifties. The response of the studios was to invest in such gimmicky technical processes as Cinemascope,VistaVision and Panavision, in a bid to improve audiences by upping the sheer scale of movies. This, together with the political tensions of the Cold War, is another reason why biblical epics and musicals thrived at the box office and the Oscars® in the Fifties, to the detriment of more deserving pictures. By the beginning of the Sixties the studios had nailed their colours to the mast of popular taste. It would be bigbudget spectacle that would attract audiences, they decided, not the sort of comedies or dramas they could easily see in their front rooms any night of the week. And certainly not the tawdry horror picture that strange Alfred Hitchcock was peddling. Driven by a promotional campaign personally masterminded by Hitchcock, Psycho was a tremendous success, earning $15 million dollars in rentals in its first year, a figure some releases struggle to match forty years later. Nominated for a handful of Oscars®, it won none, and the director himself would never be nominated again. In a bizarre finale to Hitchcock’s ‘ever the bridesmaid’ relationship to the Oscars®, he would receive the Irving J Thalberg award in 1967, this being in the gift of the Academy for producers with a particularly impressive body of work, named after MGM’s ‘Boy Wonder’ producer of the Thirties. Thus, Hitchcock’s honorary Oscar® was not even for his achievements as a director. Psycho was in many ways the first notable post-Classical 55

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Hollywood success; a low-budget hit made in the face of studio indifference and in defiance of the conventions of the day. It is certainly the first ‘modern’ horror film in its portrayal of evil not only within the family but generated by the family, and in this way it signposts the slasher movie trend of the Seventies. It also set a new threshold for permissiveness in mainstream cinema, with its unambiguously post-coital opening scene and scenes of voyeurism and sudden explosions of violence. It is also distinguished as being the first mainstream film to feature a flushing toilet, another jolt to the anxieties of US society. It was apparent that the movie audience was changing. The average age of cinemagoers had begun to drop and, for the first time, young adults alone could make a film a hit, while their parents stayed at home and watched TV. The Hollywood establishment reacted by making more bigbudget musicals and costume dramas, which the Academy duly celebrated year after year. West Side Story – certainly a notable film – saw off The Hustler in 1961. The following year the big winner was David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia. Again, this is by no means run-of-the-mill studio product, but its competition – Mutiny On The Bounty and The Longest Day – were typical of the time; bombastic period pieces without a trace of wit that used stars and effects to attract audiences. When commentators accuse George Lucas and Steven Spielberg of being responsible for the ‘dumbing down’ of cinema, they should look again at some of the pictures that the studios were only too happy to fund and aggressively promote, often to the cost of better, more deserving pictures, in the Sixties. Perhaps the nadir of the period was the eight Oscars® won by My Fair Lady in 1964, one of four musicals to win during the decade. Though not a particularly bad example of its genre, it was even then a conservative choice in a field 56

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that included, most notably, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. It says something about the curious nature of the Oscars®, and the Academy membership, that these two films would even find themselves in competition with each other. As Arnold Wayne Jones points out in his trivia book on the awards The Envelope, Please (Avon Books, 1999), the voting in this year represented for perhaps the first time an active choice between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Hollywood, with the old guard resoundingly endorsed in the final voting. At this point I must put aside any pretence of logic and declare an undying affection for, of all movies, The Sound Of Music (1965). For me, musicals have always been a genre that I’ve struggled to get along with despite the fact that the best practitioners in the field – Gene Kelly, Vincente Minnelli, etc. – were clearly significant artists. I will cheerfully suspend disbelief during the most unlikely science fiction or horror movies, but I am unable to give the benefit of the doubt to a film where someone bursts into song to further the plot. The exception is The Sound Of Music (and I also like Singin’ In The Rain a lot, for more on which you should turn to the final chapter).This, I am sure, will not endear me to those who know a thing or two about musicals. It’s like admitting to preferring a Curly Wurly to Belgian confectionery at a meeting of the Chocolate Society. The Sound Of Music is populist, very, very sweet and pretty coarse. But it works for me. It won five Oscars® and would have, I am sure, picked up another, for Julie Andrews, had she not won the previous year for Mary Poppins; widely believed to have been one in the eye to the My Fair Lady camp who had cast the non-singing Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Dolittle, the role that Andrews had created on Broadway.The Best Actress in 1965, though, was Julie Christie in John Schlesinger’s Darling – an example of 57

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the creeping acceptance being accorded to the new kids on the block by the old-timers. The old Hollywood bastions were finally stormed in 1967 when Mike Nichols won the Best Director Oscar® for The Graduate, also nominated for Best Picture alongside the defining movie of New Hollywood, Bonnie And Clyde. Both films were imbued with something of the European sensibility that had started to find favour in Hollywood in the early Sixties, with a rash of non-English language directors and performers being Oscar® nominated for such films as: Judgement At Nuremberg (1961, Maximilian Schell, Best Actor); Two Women (1961, Sophia Loren, Best Actress); Divorce Italian Style (1962, Pietro Germi, Best Director nomination, Marcello Mastroianni, Best Actor nomination); and A Man And A Woman (1966, Claude Lelouch, Best Director nomination, Anouk Aimée, Best Actress nomination). As we have already seen, the Academy was increasingly willing to acknowledge such films through nominations, but Nichols was the first of this new crop of film-makers to actually win the award. Although the Best Picture for the year was the decent, liberal, old-fashioned In The Heat Of The Night, we should all be grateful that it wasn’t the box-office and artistic disaster that is Doctor Dolittle, a dying gasp of the studios’ (in this case 20th Century Fox) misguided strategy of producing ‘prestige’, expensive musicals. Misguided except for The Sound Of Music, that is. The status quo was briefly reasserted in 1968 when Oliver! was named Best Picture and Carol Reed Best Director. Presumably this was a case of the Academy once again making amends for historical oversights as, to say the least, Oliver! is not Reed’s best work.As director of, amongst others, Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948) and most notably The Third Man (1949), Reed had proved 58

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himself among the front rank. Being a musical obviously gave Oliver! some kind of bizarre advantage amongst the Academy membership in the Sixties, but it is still an odd choice. The following year, however, saw the victory of Midnight Cowboy, a film about as far away from Oliver! as it is possible to get. John Schlesinger’s film was the first and only X-rated film to win the Best Picture award (the ‘X’ certificate, meaning for ‘Adults Only’ being appropriated by the pornography industry in the early Seventies). The success of Schlesinger’s story of street life and male prostitution, shocking then but less so now, serves as a benchmark for how far Hollywood, and the Oscars®, had travelled in ten years. And with Easy Rider and Bob And Carol And Ted And Alice also garnering nominations in 1969, it was clear that new voices in Hollywood were about to be heard.

The Winners 1960 Picture: The Apartment Director: Billy Wilder, The Apartment Actor: Burt Lancaster, Elmer Gantry Actress: Elizabeth Taylor, Butterfield 8 Supporting Actor: Peter Ustinov, Spartacus Supporting Actress: Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry Original Screenplay: Billy Wilder, IAL Diamond, The Apartment Adapted Screenplay: Richard Brooks, Elmer Gantry Black & White Cinematography: Freddie Francis, Sons And Lovers Colour Cinematography: Russell Metty, Spartacus Editing: Daniel Mandell, The Apartment Black & White Art Direction: Alexander Trauner, Edward G Boyle, The Apartment Colour Art Direction: Alexander Golitzen, Eric Orbom, Russell A Gausman, Julia Heron, Spartacus 59

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Black & White Costume Design: Edith Head, Edward Stevenson, The Facts Of Life Colour Costume Design:Valles, Bill Thomas, Spartacus Sound: Gordon E Sawyer, Fred Hynes, The Alamo Special Effects: Gene Warren,Tim Baar, The Time Machine Foreign Film: The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman), Sweden Original Score, Drama Or Comedy: Ernest Gold, Exodus Original Score, Musical: Morris Stoloff, Harry Sukman, Song Without End Original Song: Manos Hadjidakis, ‘Never On Sunday’, Never On Sunday Short Cartoon: Munro Short Live Action: Days Of The Painter Documentary Feature: The Horse With The Flying Tail Documentary Short: Giuseppina Honorary Awards: Gary Cooper, Stan Laurel, Hayley Mills Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Sol Lesser 1961 Picture: West Side Story Director: Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, West Side Story Actor: Maximilian Schell, Judgement At Nuremberg Actress: Sophia Loren, Two Women Supporting Actor: George Chakiris, West Side Story Supporting Actress: Rita Moreno, West Side Story Original Screenplay:William Inge, Splendor In The Grass Adapted Screenplay: Abby Mann, Judgement At Nuremberg Black & White Cinematography: Eugen Shuftan, The Hustler Colour Cinematography: Daniel L Fapp, West Side Story Editing:Thomas Stanford, West Side Story Black & White Art Direction: Harry Horner, Gene Callahan, The Hustler Colour Art Direction: Boris Leven,Victor A Gangelin, West Side Story Black & White Costume Design: Piero Gherardi, La Dolce Vita Colour Costume Design: Irene Sharaff, West Side Story Sound: Fred Hynes, Gordon E Sawyer, West Side Story 60

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Special Effects: Bill Warrington,Vivian C Greenham, The Guns Of Navarone Foreign Film: Through A Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman), Sweden Score, Drama Or Comedy: Henry Mancini, Breakfast At Tiffany’s Score, Musical: Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal, West Side Story Original Song: Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer, ‘Moon River’, Breakfast At Tiffany’s Short Cartoon: Ersatz Short Live Action: Seawards The Great Ships Documentary Feature: Sky Above And Mud Beneath Documentary Short: Project Hope Honorary Awards:William Hendricks, Fred Metzler, Jerome Robbins Thalberg Award: Stanley Kramer Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: George Seaton 1962 Picture: Lawrence Of Arabia Director: David Lean, Lawrence Of Arabia Actor: Gregory Peck, To Kill A Mockingbird Actress: Anne Bancroft, The Miracle Worker Supporting Actor: Ed Begley, Sweet Bird Of Youth Supporting Actress: Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker Original Screenplay: Ennio de Concini, Alfredo Gianetti, Pietro Germi, Divorce Italian Style Adapted Screenplay: Horton Foote, To Kill A Mockingbird Black & White Cinematography: Jean Bourgoin,Walter Wottiz, The Longest Day Colour Cinematography: Freddie A Young, Lawrence Of Arabia Editing: Anne Coates, Lawrence Of Arabia Black & White Art Direction: Alexander Golitzen, Henry Bumstead, Olive Emert, To Kill A Mockingbird Colour Art Direction: John Box, John Stoll, Dario Simoni, Lawrence Of Arabia 61

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Black & White Costume Design: Norma Koch, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Colour Costume Design: Mary Wills, The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm Sound: John Cox, Shepperton Sound Dept, Lawrence Of Arabia Special Effects: Robert MacDonald, Jacques Maumont, The Longest Day Foreign Film: Sundays And Cybele (Serge Bourguignon), France Score, Original: Maurice Jarre, Lawrence Of Arabia Score, Adaptation: Ray Heindorf, The Music Man Original Song: Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer, ‘Days Of Wine And Roses’, Days Of Wine And Roses Short Cartoon: The Hole Short Live Action: Happy Anniversary Documentary Feature: Black Fox Documentary Short: Dylan Thomas Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Steve Broidy 1963 Picture: Tom Jones Director:Tony Richardson, Tom Jones Actor: Sidney Poitier, Lilies Of The Field Actress: Patricia Neal, Hud Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas, Hud Supporting Actress: Margaret Rutherford, The VIPs Original Screenplay: James R Webb, How The West Was Won Adapted Screenplay: John Osborne, Tom Jones Black & White Cinematography: James Wong Howe, Hud Colour Cinematography: Leon Shamroy, Cleopatra Editing: Harold F Fress, How The West Was Won Black & White Art Direction: Gene Callahan, America, America Colour Art Direction: John F DeCuir, Jack Martin Smith, Hilyard Brown, Herman Blumenthal, Elven Webb, Maurice Pelling, Boris Juraga,Walter M Scott, Paul S Fox, Ray Moyer, Cleopatra Black & White Costume Design: Piero Gherardi, 8? Colour Costume Design: Irene Sharaff,Vittorio Nino 62

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Novarese, Renie, Cleopatra Sound: Franklin E Milton, How The West Was Won Sound Effects:Walter G Elliot, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Special Effects: Emil Kosa, Cleopatra Foreign Film: 8? (Federico Fellini), Italy Score, Original: John Addison, Tom Jones Score, Adaptation: André Prévin, Irma La Douce Original Song: James Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn, ‘Call Me Irresponsible’, Papa’s Delicate Condition Short Cartoon: The Critic Short Live Action: An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Documentary Feature: Robert Frost, A Lover’s Quarrel With The World Documentary Short: Chagall Thalberg Award: Sam Spiegel 1964 Picture: My Fair Lady Director: George Cukor, My Fair Lady Actor: Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady Actress: Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins Supporting Actor: Peter Ustinov, Topkapi Supporting Actress: Lila Kedrova, Zorba The Greek Original Screenplay: Peter Stone, Frank Tarloff, S H Barnett, Father Goose Adapted Screenplay: Edward Anhalt, Becket Black & White Cinematography:Walter Lassally, Zorba The Greek Colour Cinematography: Harry Stradling, My Fair Lady Editing: Cotton Warburton, Mary Poppins Black & White Art Direction:Vassilis Fotopoulos, Zorba The Greek Colour Art Direction: Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton, George James Hopkins, My Fair Lady Black & White Costume Design: Dorothy Jeakins, The Night Of The Iguana 63

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Colour Costume Design: Cecil Beaton, My Fair Lady Sound: George R Groves,Warner Bros Sound Dept, My Fair Lady Sound Effects: Norman Wanastall, Goldfinger Visual Effects: Peter Ellenshaw, Hamilton Luske, Eustace Lycett, Mary Poppins Foreign Film: Yesterday,Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio de Sica), Italy Score, Original: Richard M Sherman, Robert B Sherman, Mary Poppins Score, Adaptation: André Prévin, My Fair Lady Original Song: Richard M Sherman, Robert B Sherman, ‘Chim Chim Cheree’, Mary Poppins Short Cartoon: The Pink Phink Short Live Action: Casals Conducts: 1964 Documentary Feature: Jacques Cousteau’s World Without Sun Documentary Short: Nine From Little Rock Honorary Awards:William Tuttle (Make-Up Artist) 1965 Picture: The Sound Of Music Director: Robert Wise, The Sound Of Music Actor: Lee Marvin, Cat Ballou Actress: Julie Christie, Darling Supporting Actor: Martin Balsam, A Thousand Clowns Supporting Actress: Shelley Winters, A Patch Of Blue Original Screenplay: Frederic Raphael, Darling Adapted Screenplay: Robert Bolt, Doctor Zhivago Black & White Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo, Ship Of Fools Colour Cinematography: Freddie A Young, Doctor Zhivago Editing:William Reynolds, The Sound Of Music Black & White Art Direction: Robert Clatworthy, Joseph Kish, Ship Of Fools Colour Art Direction: John Box,Terry Marsh, Dario Simoni, Doctor Zhivago Black & White Costume Design: Julie Harris, Darling Colour Costume Design: Phyllis Dalton, Doctor Zhivago 64

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Sound: James P Corcoran, Fred Hynes, The Sound Of Music Sound Effects:Tregoweth Brown, The Great Race Visual Effects: John Stears, Thunderball Foreign Film: The Shop On Main Street (Jan Kadar), Czechoslovakia Score, Original: Maurice Jarre, Doctor Zhivago Score, Adaptation: Irwin Kostal, The Sound Of Music Original Song: Johnny Mandel, Paul Francis Webster, ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’, The Sandpiper Short Cartoon: The Dot And The Line Short Live Action: The Chicken Documentary Feature: The Eleanor Roosevelt Story Documentary Short: To Be Alive! Honorary Awards: Bob Hope Thalberg Award:William Wyler Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Edmond L DePatie 1966 Picture: A Man For All Seasons Director: Fred Zinneman, A Man For All Seasons Actor: Paul Scofield, A Man For All Seasons Actress: Elizabeth Taylor, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Supporting Actor:Walter Matthau, The Fortune Cookie Supporting Actress: Sandy Dennis, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Original Screenplay: Claude Lelouch, Pierre Uytterhoeven, A Man And A Woman Adapted Screenplay: Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons Black & White Cinematography: Haskell Wexler, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Colour Cinematography:Ted Moore, A Man For All Seasons Editing: Frederic Steinkamp, Henry Berman, Stewart Linder, Frank Santillo, Grand Prix Black & White Art Direction: Richard Sylbert, George James Hopkins, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Colour Art Direction: Jack Martin Smith, Dale Hennesy, Walter M Scott, Stuart A Reiss, Fantastic Voyage 65

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Black & White Costume Design: Irene Sharaff, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Colour Costume Design: Elizabeth Haffenden, Joan Bridge, A Man For All Seasons Sound: Franklin E Milton, Grand Prix Sound Effects: Gordon Daniel, Grand Prix Visual Effects: Art Cruickshank, Fantastic Voyage Foreign Film: A Man And A Woman (Claude Lelouch), France Score, Original: John Barry, Born Free Score, Adaptation: Ken Thorne, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum Original Song: John Barry, Don Black, ‘Born Free’, Born Free Short Cartoon: Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass Double Feature Short Live Action: Wild Wings Documentary Feature: The War Game Documentary Short: A Year Toward Tomorrow Honorary Awards:Y Frank Freeman,Yakima Canutt Thalberg Award: Robert Wise Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: George Bagnall 1967 Picture: In The Heat Of The Night Director: Mike Nichols, The Graduate Actor: Rod Steiger, In The Heat Of The Night Actress: Katharine Hepburn, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? Supporting Actor: George Kennedy, Cool Hand Luke Supporting Actress: Estelle Parsons, Bonnie And Clyde Original Screenplay:William Rose, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? Adapted Screenplay: Stirling Silliphant, In The Heat Of The Night Cinematography: Burnett Guffey, Bonnie And Clyde Editing: Hal Ashby, In The Heat Of The Night Art Direction: John Truscott, Edward Carrere, John W Brown, Camelot Costume Design: John Truscott, Camelot 66

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Sound:Walter Goss, Goldwyn Sound Dept, In The Heat Of The Night Sound Effects: John Poyner, The Dirty Dozen Visual Effects: L B Abbott, Doctor Dolittle Foreign Film: Closely Watched Trains (Jiri Menzel), Czechoslovakia Score, Original: Elmer Bernstein, Thoroughly Modern Millie Score, Adaptation: Alfred Newman, Ken Darby, Camelot Original Song: Leslie Bricusse, ‘Talk to the Animals’, Doctor Dolittle Short Cartoon: The Box Short Live Action: A Place To Stand Documentary Feature: The Anderson Platoon Documentary Short: The Redwoods Honorary Awards: Arthur Freed Thalberg Award: Alfred Hitchcock Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Gregory Peck 1968 Picture: Oliver! Director: Carol Reed, Oliver! Actor: Cliff Robertson, Charly Actress: Katharine Hepburn, The Lion In Winter and Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl (tie) Supporting Actor: Jack Albertson, The Subject Was Roses Supporting Actress: Ruth Gordon, Rosemary’s Baby Original Screenplay: Mel Brooks, The Producers Adapted Screenplay: James Goldman, The Lion In Winter Cinematography: Pasqualino Des Santis, Romeo And Juliet Editing: Frank P Keller, Bullitt Art Direction: John Box,Terence Marsh,Vernon Dixon, Ken Muggleston, Oliver! Costume Design: Danilo Donati, Romeo And Juliet Sound: Shepperton Studios Sound Dept, Oliver! Visual Effects: Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey Foreign Film: War And Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk), USSR Score, Original Non-Musical: John Barry, The Lion In Winter 67

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Score, Musical Picture: John Green, Oliver! Original Song: Michel Legrand, Alan & Marilyn Bergman, ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’, The Thomas Crown Affair Short Cartoon: Winnie The Pooh And The Blustery Day Short Live Action: Robert Kennedy Remembered Documentary Feature: Journey Into Self Documentary Short: Why Man Creates Honorary Awards: John Chambers (Make-Up Artist), Onna White (choreographer) Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Martha Raye 1969 Picture: Midnight Cowboy Director: John Schlesinger, Midnight Cowboy Actor: John Wayne, True Grit Actress: Maggie Smith, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie Supporting Actor: Gig Young, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Supporting Actress: Goldie Hawn, Cactus Flower Original Screenplay:William Goldman, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid Adapted Screenplay:Waldo Salt, Midnight Cowboy Cinematography: Conrad Hall, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid Editing: Francoise Bonnot, Z Art Direction: John DeCuir, Jack Martin Smith, Herman Blumenthal,Walter M Scott, George James Hopkins, Raphael Bretton, Hello, Dolly! Costume Design: Margaret Furse, Anne Of A Thousand Days Sound: Jack Solomon, Murray Spivack, Hello, Dolly! Special Effects: Robbie Robertson, Marooned Foreign Film: Z (Costa-Gavras), Algeria Score, Original Non-musical: Burt Bacharach, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid Score, Musical Picture: Lionel Newman, Lennie Hayton, Hello, Dolly! Original Song: Burt Bacharach, Hal David, ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid 68

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Short Cartoon: It’s Tough To Be A Bird Short Live Action: The Magic Machines Documentary Feature: The Love Of Life Documentary Short: Czechoslovakia 1968 Honorary Awards: Cary Grant Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: George Jessel

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1970 – 1979:The Rise And Fall Of New Hollywood

Let us return, Forrest Gump-like, to somewhere around the time when the Sixties became the Seventies. Perhaps the Academy’s auditors, Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) undertook a restructure, as such organisations are want to do. Perhaps they decided to put a couple of guys on the AMPAS® account full time. Let’s call them Bob and Marv. Nice guys. They’d been born a little too late to fully explore the Sixties thing, having gone straight into the Price Waterhouse graduate programme in ‘67, but no way did they consider themselves corporate guys. Bob and Marv liked the movies, and they were thrilled to have been handed the Oscars® account. They would personally receive the voting slips from Academy members once the nominations had been announced, and then total up all the votes. On Oscar® night, only they and they alone would know in advance the names to be called out of each sealed envelope.They made a special effort to check out the nominated films and usually managed to attend screenings that the Academy arranged for members with their fiancées Barb and Joannie. This way, they could debate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the films up for honours in the office while opening the votes and feel as much a part of the process as was possible without actually casting one. 70

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Bob and Marv were sitting out front at the Oscars® show when Patton took most of the top awards for 1970. They exchanged an excited glance when Goldie Hawn began to read the Best Actor nominations as they knew what no one else in the auditorium did, that the name she would be reading out was that of George C Scott for his performance as the military hero. This much-respected actor, then at the peak of his powers, had asked for his nomination to be withdrawn (as he had in 1962, when nominated for The Hustler), claiming that taking part in competitive awards was demeaning for actors (and who is to say he was wrong?).When it became clear the nomination would stand, he had not campaigned for it, instead insisting that he would not accept it if he won (itself a sort of ‘anti-campaign’ which perversely attracted well-wishers). He did win, and, true to his word, neither attended the ceremony or accepted the award, conduct considerably more becoming than that of Marlon Brando who, two years later, declined his Best Actor award for The Godfather (1972). Brando was protesting at the treatment, both on and off screen, of American Indians and was represented at the Oscars® by Sacheen Littlefeather, who, in the aftermath of this fiasco, was found to be a bit-part actress and sometime nude model. Patton was a fairly safe bet for top honours, being a more ‘serious’ picture than other nominees Airport and Love Story; and a more traditional one than either M*A*S*H or Five Easy Pieces, whose nominations were further evidence of the breakthrough of Hollywood’s Young Turks. Well, not quite so young in the case of the director of M*A*S*H. Robert Altman was born in 1925 and had enjoyed a chequered career shooting industrial films and TV shows, making many enemies at the studios in the process with his aggressive, contrary manner.With its irrev71

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erent attitude towards the Korean War (for ‘Korea’ read ‘Vietnam’) and its loose, conversational style, M*A*S*H was a big critical and commercial hit. Altman took advantage of his sudden influence and went on to make a succession of formally interesting box-office disasters during the Seventies, of which Nashville (1975) is the most famous, and The Long Goodbye (1973) the most underrated. Had Altman been more benign and congenial, he might have been considered something of a father figure to the other rising stars of the New Hollywood.William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were all significantly younger than Altman, and all had begun to pitch up in Hollywood. Although the same age as Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola had already begun to establish himself as a prime mover in the New Hollywood and it was he who emerged as the standard bearer for the new generation with his production company American Zoetrope, which he hoped would become a haven for film-makers disaffected with the studios. Already with a couple of movies to his credit (including the execrable Finian’s Rainbow (1969), one of those whimsical musicals so beloved of the studios in the Sixties), Coppola was another Oscar®-winner for Patton, having written the screenplay. When he collected the award, he had already committed to his next directing project, a period crime drama for Paramount, against whom he was having to fight for control of the film. Bob and Marv thought the 1971 Oscars® were right on the money.William Friedkin’s The French Connection, a blistering crime drama shot in a semi-documentary vérité style that Friedkin favoured, won five awards, all deserved. Friedkin beat his friend Peter Bogdanovich, nominated for The Last Picture Show, to the Best Director award, although, in a rare display of humility, he declared that he thought the 72

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statuette should have gone to Stanley Kubrick for A Clockwork Orange. Bob and Marv were pleased this was not so, as Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ brilliant cautionary novel as a broad farce was too arty for them, and left them feeling unsettled. William Friedkin was the youngest ever winner of the Best Director Oscar® at thirty-two.The 1971 awards was a defining moment for the New Hollywood, whose leading lights had challenged the conservative old order and had won the top prizes on offer. There was to be no let-up in their dominance when the following year Coppola’s crime movie The Godfather was a massive worldwide hit and the winner of the Best Picture Oscar®, a third in a row for Paramount, emerging as the studio with an eye for hot new talent. (The big winner that year was actually Cabaret, which holds the record of being the film having won most Oscars® – eight – but not Best Picture.) Both The French Connection and The Godfather are exemplary films, which show the diversity of talent on offer to Hollywood in the early Seventies. Friedkin fancies himself as something of an intellectual, yet takes an intensely visceral approach to filmmaking, most evident in the justly acclaimed chase sequence in The French Connection. Coppola married a respect of the virtues of Classical Hollywood – strong narrative, powerful characters – with a uniquely rich visual style (strongly aided by his cameraman Gordon Willis) and a penchant for sudden, graphic violence, à la Bonnie And Clyde. Coppola and Friedkin were now the two hottest directors in Hollywood and had their pick of projects, all of which would figure in the Oscar® nominations in the following years. Friedkin was first up, in 1973, with his adaptation of the blockbuster novel The Exorcist. The project had scared off more established names than Friedkin, who was accepted 73

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by Warner Bros only after the strong opening of The French Connection, even though he had long been preferred by the book’s author, William Peter Blatty. The subsequent film was shocking to contemporary audiences, most particularly for its combination of child sexuality, albeit Satanically induced, with genuinely disturbing cutting-edge make-up effects, but proved to be a box-office powerhouse. However, at the 1973 Oscars®, the Academy not surprisingly preferred the easy charm and star power of The Sting, which won seven awards compared to The Exorcist’s two. Bob and Marv both preferred American Graffiti, George Lucas’ semi-autobiographical film of growing up in earlySixties America, before assassinations, before Vietnam. Lucas’ sponsor was Coppola, who had fought for the film in the face of studio incomprehension, and the film’s critical and commercial success was further evidence of Coppola’s apparent golden touch. Any disappointment Coppola may have felt by Graffiti’s Oscar® failure must have been assuaged a year later when he matched Billy Wilder’s achievement for The Apartment, picking up awards for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay for The Godfather, Part II. His equally brilliant, but, to the Academy’s taste, more ‘European’ The Conversation, was also nominated for Best Picture in 1974. The same year another of Hollywood’s bright young things, Martin Scorsese, tasted Oscar® success for the first time. Impressing the industry with his dynamic, heartfelt Mean Streets (1973) after spending years toiling for lowbudget film-makers like Roger Corman, he had been handed a mainstream project, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, for which Ellen Burstyn won Best Actress. Scorsese was arguably the most cine-literate of his contemporaries, in thrall to the great film-makers of his childhood, such as Michael Powell and David Lean. Passionate about 74

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film’s possibilities, his taste in material was too strong for the Academy who would nominate Taxi Driver for Best Picture in 1976, but snub Scorsese for the Best Director nominations and, as we shall see, systematically overlook him in years to come. Meanwhile, Bob and Marv had become old hands at this Oscar® business and had started to grow a little disaffected, their tastes in movies starting to ossify. It had been exciting when The French Connection and The Godfather had broken through, but things were becoming just a little too permissive, a little too complicated for their tastes. It was okay when One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest swept the board at the 1975 awards, as it was neat for a film to finally match the record set by It Happened One Night and win the Top Five. But Bob and Marv had been disturbed by the antiauthoritarian message of the film and, frankly, pissed off that Jaws hadn’t been named Best Picture. And they had fallen asleep during Barry Lyndon. Before the Bob and Marv device starts to wear too thin, here’s my point. At some juncture during the Seventies, something changed in America, a reassertion of ‘traditional’ American values, and this began to be reflected in popular and critical responses to film. The highly influential New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who had courted and supported the rising stars of New Hollywood, identified the phenomenon in a long essay as ‘Fear of Movies’. Friends of hers, she claimed, had started to ‘recoil’ at her recommendations: ‘It’s the same look of distrust I encountered when I suggested Carrie or The Fury or Jaws or Taxi Driver or the two Godfather pictures before that. They immediately start talking about how they ‘don’t like’ violence … these other, ‘more mature’ moviegoers don’t want that sense of danger … Audiences hiss at the sight of blood now, as if 75

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they didn’t have it in their own bodies.They seem to be saying, ‘I don’t need this!’ … People had probably had it with movie violence long before the [Vietnam] war was over, but they didn’t feel free to admit that they really wanted relaxed, escapist entertainment … I get the feeling that I’m being told that my urging them to see The Fury means that I’ll be responsible if there’s another Vietnam.’ The Bobs and Marvs of the Academy had had enough of the New Hollywood and everything it stood for. In 1976, an exceptional year for cinema, they gave the Best Picture award to Rocky. Rather than All The President’s Men. Or Network.These incredibly powerful films about politics and the mass media in America lost out to a simplistic Cinderella story, the sort the Academy has always loved. This isn’t to say that Rocky is a bad picture. Stallone’s screenplay is formulaic, but he had the sense to write himself a great part and his breakthrough performance is winning enough. And John G Alvidsen’s direction comes alive during the climatic fight, although he seems to have been in a coma for the preceding ninety minutes. But Rocky isn’t a better movie than All The President’s Men now and it wasn’t in 1976. It appears that the Academy, and America, just got fed up with hearing about their shortcomings and stopped listening, preferring the sound of Bill Conti’s thrilling Rocky theme. The stars of the New Hollywood were not exactly innocent bystanders in their demise. Raging egos and vigorous drug habits meant that most of them didn’t cotton on that their time was short and that, having made a lot of money from New Hollywood’s labours, the studios were strong again and this time determined to stay in control. And, besides, some of the Young Turks were only too happy to cash in their credibility chips and start making top quality 76

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crowd pleasers. Step forward, please, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who, you won’t need reminding, changed Hollywood irrevocably in 1977 with the release of Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Their critics seem unable to recognise that both of these are, by any objective standards, pretty good movies and Spielberg’s oftcommented upon sense of ‘childlike wonder’ for matters extra-terrestrial remains in evidence re-viewing Close Encounters. Less overexposed than Star Wars and its successors, it’s a lovely movie with a genuine, if muddled, spiritual dimension. Both were passed over for the big prizes in 1977 in favour of Woody Allen’s terrific Annie Hall, a rare example of a comedy getting the nod from the Academy. Lucas had to be content with just the seven Oscars® and the most successful film of all time. In the same year, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, a remake of The Wages Of Fear (1953), was released. This frankly demented picture of desperate men risking their lives in a South American jungle was, for its time, a hugely expensive enterprise ($20 million) and expected to be the hit of the year.To say that it flopped is to overstate its success and, despite a flurry of controversy surrounding the gay serial-killer film Cruising (1980), Friedkin has never again come close to the popular and critical acclaim his films achieved in the early Seventies. Coppola meanwhile was making a movie that, thematically and visually, is not wholly dissimilar to Friedkin’s folly. Originally developed by his protégé Lucas, Coppola started filming Apocalypse Now in the Philippines in March 1976. And he just kept on shooting for 238 days, going through $30 million of Zoetrope’s and United Artists’ money. The release was delayed time and again, and during the interim Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter was released to Oscar® glory.The 1978 Oscars® were all about Vietnam, with two films using the backdrop of the war, Cimino’s and Hal 77

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Ashby’s Coming Home, the favourites for honours. Coming Home won the main acting awards but Cimino was named Best Director and the movie was Best Picture. (Cimino would quickly find himself short of admirers on release of his follow-up, the wildly over-budget and actually rather good Heaven’s Gate (1980), which put the final nail in the coffin of New Hollywood.) Coppola felt thwarted and as the decade drew to a close, he was sitting on a multimillion dollar art movie that industry insiders had already written off.When it finally saw the light of day towards the end of 1979, it was a modest hit and has certainly lasted well.The film has some outrageous, all-time great scenes early on but they are steadily suffocated by meandering stretches of pseudo-philosophy. And anyone who tells you the scenes with Brando are any good is either lying or had fallen asleep by then. Although nominated in many categories at the 1979 Oscars®, Apocalypse Now won only two, with the widely-predicted victory of the minor and inexpensive Kramer vs Kramer serving as a permanent riposte to the ambition of Coppola and the New Hollywood, and the ultimate victory for Bob and Marv.

The Winners 1970 Picture: Patton Director: Franklin J Schaffner, Patton Actor: George C Scott, Patton Actress: Glenda Jackson, Women In Love Supporting Actor: John Mills, Ryan’s Daughter Supporting Actress: Helen Hayes, Airport Original Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, Edmund H North, Patton Adapted Screenplay: Ring Lardner Jr, M*A*S*H Cinematography: Freddie Young, Ryan’s Daughter 78

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Editing: Hugh S Fowler, Patton Art Direction: Urie McCleary, Gil Parrondo, Antonio Mateos, Pierre-Louis Thevenet, Patton Costume Design: Nino Novarese, Cromwell Sound: Douglas Williams, Don Bassman, Patton Visual Effects: A D Flowers, L B Abbott, Tora! Tora! Tora! Foreign Film: Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri), Italy Score, Original: Francis Lai, Love Story Score, Original Song:The Beatles, Let It Be Original Song: Fred Karlin, Rob Royer, James Griffin, ‘For All We Know’, Lovers And Other Strangers Short Cartoon: Is It Always Right To Be Right? Short Live Action: The Resurrection Of Broncho Billy Documentary Feature: Woodstock Documentary Short: Interviews With My Lai Veterans Honorary Awards: Lillian Gish, Orson Welles Thalberg Award: Ingmar Bergman Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Frank Sinatra 1971 Picture: The French Connection Director:William Friedkin, The French Connection Actor: Gene Hackman, The French Connection Actress: Jane Fonda, Klute Supporting Actor: Ben Johnson, The Last Picture Show Supporting Actress: Cloris Leachman, The Last Picture Show Original Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky, The Hospital Adapted Screenplay: Ernest Tidyman, The French Connection Cinematography: Oswald Morris, Fiddler On The Roof Editing: Jerry Greenberg, The French Connection Art Direction: John Box, Ernest Archer, Jack Maxsted, Gil Parrondo,Vernon Dixon, Nicholas And Alexandra Costume Design:Yvonne Blake, Anthony Castillo, Nicholas And Alexandra Sound: Gordon K McCallum, David Hildyard, Fiddler On The Roof 79

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Visual Effects: Alan Maley, Eustace Lycett, Danny Lee, Bedknobs And Broomsticks Foreign Film: The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica), Italy Score, Original: Michel Legrand, Summer Of ‘42 Score, Adaptation & Original Song: John Williams, Fiddler On The Roof Original Song: Isaac Hayes, ‘Theme from Shaft’, Shaft Short Animated: The Crunch Bird Short Live Action: The Sentinels Of Silence Documentary Feature: The Hellstrom Chronicle Documentary Short: The Sentinels Of Silence Honorary Awards: Charles Chaplin 1972 Picture: The Godfather Director: Bob Fosse, Cabaret Actor: Marlon Brando, The Godfather Actress: Liza Minnelli, Cabaret Supporting Actor: Joel Grey, Cabaret Supporting Actress: Eileen Heckart, Butterflies Are Free Original Screenplay: Jeremy Larner, The Candidate Adapted Screenplay: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth, Cabaret Editing: David Bretherton, Cabaret Art Direction: Rolf Zehetbauer, Jurgen Kiebach, Herbert Strabel, Cabaret Costume Design: Anthony Powell, Travels With My Aunt Sound: Robert Knudson, David Hildyard, Cabaret Visual Effects: A D Flowers, L B Abbott, The Poseidon Adventure Foreign Film: The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel), France Score, Original: Charles Chaplin, Limelight Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Ralph Burns, Cabaret Original Song: Al Kasha, Joel Hirschhorn, ‘The Morning After’, The Poseidon Adventure 80

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Short Animated: A Christmas Carol Short Live Action: Norman Rockwell’s World Documentary Feature: Marjoe Documentary Short: This Tiny World Honorary Awards: Edward G Robinson, Charles S Boren Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Rosalind Russell 1973 Picture: The Sting Director: George Roy Hill, The Sting Actor: Jack Lemmon, Save The Tiger Actress: Glenda Jackson, A Touch Of Class Supporting Actor: John Houseman, The Paper Chase Supporting Actress:Tatum O’Neal, Paper Moon Original Screenplay: David S Ward, The Sting Adapted Screenplay:William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist Cinematography: Sven Nykvist, Cries And Whispers Editing:William Reynolds, The Sting Art Direction: Henry Bumstead, James Payne, The Sting Costume Design: Edith Head, The Sting Sound: Robert Knudson, Chris Newman, The Exorcist Foreign Film: Day For Night (François Truffaut), France Score, Original: Marvin Hamlisch, The Way We Were Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Marvin Hamlisch, The Sting Original Song: Marvin Hamlisch, Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, ‘The Way We Were’, The Way We Were Short Animated: Frank Film Short Live Action: The Bolero Documentary Feature: The Great American Cowboy Documentary Short: Princeton: A Search for Answers Honorary Awards: Henri Langlois, Groucho Marx Thalberg Award: Lawrence Weingarten Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Lew Wasserman

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1974 Picture: The Godfather, Part II Director: Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather, Part II Actor: Art Carney, Harry And Tonto Actress: Ellen Burstyn, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore Supporting Actor: Robert De Niro, The Godfather, Part II Supporting Actress: Ingrid Bergman, Murder On The Orient Express Original Screenplay: Robert Towne, Chinatown Adapted Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, The Godfather, Part II Cinematography: Fred Koenekamp, Joseph Biroc, The Towering Inferno Editing: Harold F Kress, Carl Kress, The Towering Inferno Art Direction: Dean Tavoularis, Angelo Graham, George R Nelson, The Godfather, Part II Costume Design:Theoni V Aldredge, The Great Gatsby Sound: Ronald Pierce, Melvin Metcalfe Snr, Earthquake Visual Effects: Frank Brendel, Glen Robinson, Albert Whitlock, Earthquake Foreign Film: Amacord (Federico Fellini), Italy Score, Original: Nino Rota, Carmine Coppola, The Godfather, Part II Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Nelson Riddle, The Great Gatsby Original Song: Al Kasha, Joel Hirschhorn, ‘We May Never Know Love Like This Again’, The Towering Inferno Short Animated: Closed Mondays Short Live Action: One-Eyed Men Are Kings Documentary Feature: Hearts And Minds Documentary Short: Don’t Honorary Awards: Howard Hawks, Jean Renoir Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Arthur B Krim 1975 Picture: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Director: Milos Forman, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest 82

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Actor: Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Actress: Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Supporting Actor: George Burns, The Sunshine Boys Supporting Actress: Lee Grant, Shampoo Original Screenplay: Frank Pierson, Dog Day Afternoon Adapted Screenplay: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Cinematography: John Alcott, Barry Lyndon Editing:Verna Fields, Jaws Art Direction: Ken Adam, Roy Walker,Vernon Dixon, Barry Lyndon Costume Design: Ulla-Britt Soderlund, Milena Canonero, Barry Lyndon Sound: Ronald Pierce, Robert L Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery, John Carter, Jaws Sound Effects: Peter Berkos, The Hindenburg Visual Effects: Albert Whitlock, Glen Robinson, The Hindenburg Foreign Film: Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa), Japan/USSR Score, Original: John Williams, Jaws Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Leonard Rosenman, Barry Lyndon Original Song: Keith Carradine, ‘I’m Easy’, Nashville Short Animated: Great Short Live Action: Angel And Big Joe Documentary Feature: The Man Who Skied Down Mount Everest Documentary Short: The End Of The Game Honorary Awards: Mary Pickford Thalberg Award: Mervyn LeRoy Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Jules C Stein 1976 Picture: Rocky Director: John G Alvidsen, Rocky Actor: Peter Finch, Network Actress: Faye Dunaway, Network Supporting Actor: Jason Robards, All The President’s Men 83

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Supporting Actress: Beatrice Straight, Network Original Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky, Network Adapted Screenplay:William Goldman, All The President’s Men Cinematography: Haskell Wexler, Bound For Glory Editing: Richard Halsey, Scott Conrad, Rocky Art Direction: George Jenkins, George Gaines, All The President’s Men Costume Design: Danilo Donati, Fellini’s Casanova Sound: Arthur Piantadosi, Les Fresholtz, Dick Alexander, Jim Webb, All The President’s Men Visual Effects: Carlo Rambaldi, Glen Robinson, Frank Van Der Veer, King Kong; LB Abbott, Glen Robinson, Matthew Yuricich, Logan’s Run Foreign Film: Black And White In Color (Jean-Jacques Annaud), Ivory Coast Score, Original: Jerry Goldsmith, The Omen Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Leonard Rosenman, Bound For Glory Original Song: Barbra Streisand, Paul Williams, ‘Evergreen’, A Star Is Born Short Animated: Leisure Short Live Action: In The Region Of Ice Documentary Feature: Harlan County, U.S.A. Documentary Short: Number Our Days Thalberg Award: Pandro S Berman 1977 Picture: Annie Hall Director:Woody Allen, Annie Hall Actor: Richard Dreyfuss, The Goodbye Girl Actress: Diane Keaton, Annie Hall Supporting Actor: Jason Robards, Julia Supporting Actress:Vanessa Redgrave, Julia Original Screenplay:Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman, Annie Hall Adapted Screenplay: Alvin Sargent, Julia 84

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Cinematography:Vilmos Zsigmond, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Editing: Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas, Richard Chew, Star Wars Art Direction: John Barry, Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, Roger Christian, Star Wars Costume Design: John Mollo, Star Wars Sound: Don MacDougall, Ray West, Bob Minkler, Derek Ball, Star Wars Visual Effects: John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Grant McCune, Robert Balack, Star Wars Foreign Film: Madame Rosa (Moshe Mizrahi), France Score, Original: John Williams, Star Wars Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Jonathan Tunick, A Little Night Music Original Song: Joseph Brooks, ‘You Light Up My Life’, You Light Up My Life Short Animated: Sand Castle Short Live Action: I’ll Find A Way Documentary Feature: Who Are The Debolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? Documentary Short: Gravity Is My Enemy Honorary Awards: Margaret Booth, Gordon E Sawyer, Sidney Salkow Thalberg Award:Walter Mirisch Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Charlton Heston Special Achievement Awards: Frank Warner (Sound effects editing, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind), Ben Burtt (Sound effects editing, Star Wars) 1978 Picture: The Deer Hunter Director: Michael Cimino, The Deer Hunter Actor: Jon Voight, Coming Home Actress: Jane Fonda, Coming Home Supporting Actor: Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter Supporting Actress: Maggie Smith, California Suite 85

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Original Screenplay:Waldo Salt, Robert C Jones, Nancy Dowd, Coming Home Adapted Screenplay: Oliver Stone, Midnight Express Cinematography: Nestor Almendros, Days Of Heaven Editing: Peter Zinner, The Deer Hunter Art Direction: Paul Sylbert, Edwin O’Donovan, George Gaines, Heaven Can Wait Costume Design: Anthony Powell, Death On The Nile Sound: Richard Portman,William McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, Darrin Knight, The Deer Hunter Visual Effects: Les Bowie, Colin Chilvers, Denys Coop, Roy Field, Derek Meddings, Zoran Perisic, Superman Foreign Film: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Bertrand Blier), France Score, Original: Giorgio Moroder, Midnight Express Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Joe Renzetti, The Buddy Holly Story Original Song: Paul Jabara, ‘Last Dance’, Thank God It’s Friday Short Animated: Special Delivery Short Live Action: Teenage Father Documentary Feature: Scared Straight! Documentary Short: The Flight Of The Gossamer Condor Honorary Awards:Walter Lantz, Laurence Olivier, King Vidor, The Musuem of Modern Art Film Dept Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Leo Jaffe 1979 Picture: Kramer vs Kramer Director: Robert Benton, Kramer vs Kramer Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs Kramer Actress: Sally Field, Norma Rae Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas, Being There Supporting Actress: Meryl Streep, Kramer vs Kramer Original Screenplay: Steve Tesich, Breaking Away Adapted Screenplay: Robert Benton, Kramer vs Kramer Cinematography:Vittorio Storaro, Apocalypse Now Editing: Alan Heim, All That Jazz 86

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Art Direction: Philip Rosenberg,Tony Walton, Edward Stewart, Gary Brink, All That Jazz Costume Design: Albert Wolsky, All That Jazz Sound:Walter Murch, Robert Berger, Richard Beggs, Nat Boxer, Apocalypse Now Visual Effects: H R Giger, Carlo Rambaldi, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder, Denys Ayling, Alien Foreign Film: The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff), Germany Score, Original: Georges Delerue, A Little Romance Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Ralph Burns, All That Jazz Original Song: David Shire, Norman Gimble, ‘It Goes Like It Goes’, Norma Rae Short Animated: Every Child Short Live Action: Board And Care Documentary Feature: Best Boy Documentary Short: Paul Robeson,Tribute To An Artist Honorary Awards: Hal Elias, Alec Guinness Thalberg Award: Ray Stark Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Robert Benjamin Special Achievement Award: Alan Splet (Sound editing, The Black Stallion)

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1980 – 1989:Years Of Plenty

Hollywood, and the Oscars®, have always rewarded success. Few, if any, are the films that have won top honours but were entirely unsuccessful at the box office in their year of release. (Marty, Best Picture of 1955, made a fairly mediocre $2 million at a time when the winners were starting to make serious amounts of money.The following year Around The World In 80 Days earned ten times that.) In fact, it is historically more likely that hugely successful films will do well at the Oscars®, a tradition that runs from Gone With The Wind to Titanic (1997). But in the Eighties a schism emerged between the kinds of films that the newly strengthened studios were greenlighting in the expectation of creating box-office hits, and the ‘prestige’ films that they were comfortable promoting during the awards season which, by extension, the Academy were willing to endorse. Thus, from the early Eighties on, the really big moneymakers of the year rarely figured in the running for honours, and those that did, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Batman (1989), slugged it out in the minor technical categories.The Eighties were the first decade in which not a single highest grosser of the year won Best Picture. There were two main reasons for this. Firstly, as indicated in the titles above, the movies designed as box-office conquerors increasingly became the stuff of fantastic genre 88

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films – action/adventure, fantasy and science fiction, often the brainchild of the Lucas/Spielberg locus, or of their peers. The Hollywood establishment has always looked down upon genre films and, with the possible exception of horror movies, none more so than fantasy. While the Academy was happy to let these movies become huge successes and bankroll the films its members wanted to make, no way was it going to endorse them with major Oscars®. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) and E.T. (1982) were the only such films to be nominated for Best Picture in the Eighties, both directed by Steven Spielberg.Although Raiders … was always a long shot, being unremittingly entertaining without any kind of moral message (except perhaps belatedly coming out against Nazis as undesirables), E.T. was widely regarded to be a strong contender for honours. Instead it buckled in the face of Lord Attenborough’s sincerity-fest about another wrinkly bald guy, Gandhi. Following that, a sort of cultural apartheid reigned where the moneymakers would be let loose in the summer in order to raise the money to pay for the Oscar® push devoted to the autumn historical epics and costume dramas. None of which is to say that these maligned moneymaking movies were particularly great.Which brings us to reason number two for the Academy’s apathy. In the Seventies movies like The French Connection, The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars had been both hugely successful and, to a greater or lesser degree, critically well thought of. With the onset of the post-Star Wars merchandising mentality in Hollywood, moneymakers got dumber. Of course, there have always been films that have done well without being of particular benefit to mankind. But during the Eighties routine crowd pleasers such as Flashdance (1984), Top Gun (1986), Look Who’s Talking (1989) and just about anything 89

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featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger (the quintessential Eighties icon, all muscle and no depth) made amounts of money almost unheard of just ten or fifteen years earlier through aggressive marketing without, let’s face it, being any good at all. It is usually Lucas and/or Spielberg who get the blame for this decline, but, on the contrary, more often than not it is the films with which they had some direct personal involvement that are notable for their quality during this period. Rather, it is the rise of the ‘creative’ studio executive that is to blame, producers who had worked within the system and attempted to reduce the formula of a successful movie to a few easily understood and reproducible constants.The rise of the ‘high concept’ movie as it became known, and of which the list above is indicative, is most identified with the now notorious producer Don Simpson. An in-house producer at Paramount during the New Hollywood heyday of the Seventies, it was Simpson, with his more logistically-minded partner Jerry Bruckheimer, who did more than anyone in the Eighties to lower the expectations of audiences with a succession of clichéd romps that were as artistically empty as they were politically reactionary. As well as the aforementioned Top Gun and Flashdance, Simpson-Bruckheimer were also responsible for the Beverly Hills Cop films (partially redeemed by an at-hispeak Eddie Murphy) and Days Of Thunder (1990), after the failure of which the partnership went into decline. Reemerging in the mid-Nineties with back-to-back hits Dangerous Minds (1994) and Crimson Tide (1995), the partnership was finally severed by the lifestyle-induced death of Simpson. Since then Bruckheimer has been a consistently successful producer of marginally more sophisticated action movies (Con Air, 1997, Armageddon, 1998). All of which is to say that we shouldn’t be too sorry that 90

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box-office titans of the Eighties such as Predator, Dirty Dancing, and Three Men And A Baby (all 1987) were not slogging it out for Best Picture on Oscar® night. But a less remarked upon and more pernicious effect of the rise of the ‘high concept’ movie is that standards across the board were lowered in the Eighties. A large number of routine and mediocre pictures found themselves in the running for major honours by virtue of not being aimed at fifteen-yearold boys, regardless of intrinsic merit. The decade didn’t start out that way. In fact, the Best Picture nominees for 1980 are an extraordinary selection: Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull and Tess together would make up five of the best films of any year. The fact that Ordinary People won is not the travesty that some revisionists might have us believe. Redford certainly does not have the unique eye of either Scorsese or David Lynch (both nominated as Best Director), but his Ordinary People is at least a good example of the sort of movie the Academy likes – an artistically conservative, morally liberal, well-acted drama. Scorsese has subsequently been reported as saying he made Raging Bull as if it would be his last film – both his health and career were in decline in the late Seventies – and it certainly is a remarkable film. But it is also one with a brutal aesthetic, and one can see why the Academy did not take to it, other than acknowledging Robert De Niro’s truly mesmerising performance. In truth, Lynch and The Elephant Man was probably the big loser in 1980. It did not convert any of its nine nominations, yet arguably has aged the best of all the nominees. 1981 wasn’t bad either.The Best Picture favourites were Mark Rydell’s tooth-itchingly sweet On Golden Pond and Warren Beatty’s Reds, a majestic conflation of Leanesque period romance and agitprop. Raiders Of The Lost Ark was 91

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more of an outsider, but not as far out as Louis Malle’s Atlantic City and the small British picture Chariots Of Fire. In his oft-cited memoir Adventures In The Screen Trade, William Goldman, wrote about the 1981 Oscars®:‘When I was researching this book, I asked everybody whom they were voting for, and truly everyone said the same thing: “Chariots Of Fire but it hasn’t got a chance”.’ It won, of course, and British cinema had its first glimmer of international respectability since the heyday of the Sixties. This continued the following year when all fell before Gandhi (1982). It is hard not to appear cynical when being critical of Attenborough’s biopic. It is stating the obvious to say its heart is in the right place (when was this ever not the case with Attenborough, even if one is not always sure of his taste?), and its solid virtues of craft are all up there on screen. But its artistic achievement is as minor as the running time is long, all the more so in comparison with the vanquished films of 1982. Aside from E.T., the other nominations were Costa-Gavras’ political thriller Missing, Sydney Pollack’s terrific gender comedy Tootsie, and Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, the acme of courtroom dramas before the genre was Grishamised and debased. There is a strong case that, aside from Gandhi, this is the best Best Picture line-up ever. Paul Newman was never better than as the alcoholic ambulance chaser in The Verdict, really never better. Melissa Matheson’s script for E.T. was fizzingly alive to the motivations and sensitivities of children, and Larry Gelbart’s for Tootsie was a comedy that was actually about something, the sort that was about to dry up in Hollywood. But all lost out to the Academy’s collective vote for World Peace. In a by now predictable gesture of backpeddling for past mistakes, Newman would win two Oscars® in the Eighties.The first, an honorary award given in 1985, presumably on the assumption that he didn’t have 92

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many more films in him, was a faintly pathetic gesture by the Academy.They undermined it further by declaring him Best Actor the following year, for a low-key re-creation of his Hustler character ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson in The Color Of Money. Even in the Academy’s long history of slights and oversights, rarely can one individual have been the victim of such carelessness as Newman. Things took a steep nosedive from then on. 1983’s selection of nominees for Best Picture was pretty ordinary, with Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (which, incidentally,William Goldman also has some interesting things to say about in Adventures In The Screen Trade) standing a heroic head and shoulders above the competition. But the big winner was the hideous Terms Of Endearment, as carefully calibrated and manipulating as any Simpson-Bruckheimer contrivance, with a performance of truly loathsome self-satisfaction from Shirley MacLaine. “I deserve this,” she announced to a typically gushing audience when picking up her Best Actress Oscar®, an acceptance of such astonishing gracelessness that was, regrettably, overshadowed by Sally Field’s career-suicide “You like me!” speech the following year. The rest of the Eighties winners are not as bad as Terms Of Endearment, although I hold a special place in my disaffection for Rain Man (1988). As bad a movie as Barry Levinson has made (and I’ve seen Sphere [1998]), Rain Man is almost unique in being a movie in which Tom Cruise is actually watchable alongside the egregious Acting of Dustin Hoffman. Amadeus (1984), Out Of Africa (1985 – has anybody actually seen all of Out Of Africa?), Platoon (1986), The Last Emperor (1987) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989) are all too typical of the age, oozing some industrial notion of ‘quality’ without being in any way interesting or vital. Driving Miss Daisy, indeed, was the first Best Picture whose director 93

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(Bruce Beresford) was not even nominated for Best Director since Grand Hotel in 1931–32, when Best Picture nominations routinely outstripped those for directors two-to-one. The triumph of this anonymous, artistically comatose picture is illustrative of the decade when, more than at any time since the heyday of the studios, personal vision and artistry was suppressed in favour of corporate notions of ‘quality’ that were depressingly, and predictably, homogenous.

The Winners 1980 Picture: Ordinary People Director: Robert Redford, Ordinary People Actor: Robert De Niro, Raging Bull Actress: Sissy Spacek, Coal Miner’s Daughter Supporting Actor:Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People Supporting Actress: Mary Steenburgen, Melvin And Howard Original Screenplay: Bo Goldman, Melvin And Howard Adapted Screenplay: Alvin Sargent, Ordinary People Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth, Ghislaine Cloquet, Tess Editing:Thelma Schoonmaker, Raging Bull Art Direction: Pierre Guffroy, Jack Stephens, Tess Costume Design: Anthony Powell, Tess Sound: Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Greg Landaker, Peter Sutton, The Empire Strikes Back Visual Effects: Brian Johnson, Richard Edlund, Denis Muren, Bruce Nicholson, The Empire Strikes Back Foreign Film: Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears (Vladimir Menshov), USSR Score, Original: Michael Gore, Fame Original Song: Michael Gore, Dean Pitchford, ‘Fame’, Fame Short Animated: The Fly Short Live Action: The Dollar Bottom Documentary Feature: From Mao To Mozart: Isaac Stern In China 94

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Documentary Short: Karl Hess:Toward Liberty Honorary Awards: Henry Fonda, Fred Hynes 1981 Picture: Chariots Of Fire Director:Warren Beatty, Reds Actor: Henry Fonda, On Golden Pond Actress: Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond Supporting Actor: John Gielgud, Arthur Supporting Actress: Maureen Stapleton, Reds Original Screenplay: Colin Welland, Chariots Of Fire Adapted Screenplay: Ernest Thompson, On Golden Pond Cinematography:Vittorio Storaro, Reds Editing: Michael Kahn, Raiders Of The Lost Ark Art Direction: Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, Michael Ford, Raiders Of The Lost Ark Costume Design: Milena Canonero, Chariots Of Fire Sound: Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker, Roy Charman, Raiders Of The Lost Ark Visual Effects: Richard Edlund, Kit West, Bruce Nicholson, Joe Johnston, Raiders Of The Lost Ark Make-Up: Rick Baker, An American Werewolf In London Foreign Film: Mephisto (Istvan Szabo), Hungary Score, Original:Vangelis, Chariots Of Fire Original Song: Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, Christopher Cross, Peter Allen, ‘Arthur’s Theme (The Best That You Can Do)’, Arthur Short Animated: Crac Short Live Action: Violet Documentary Feature: Genocide Documentary Short: Close Harmony Honorary Awards: Barbara Stanwyck Thalberg Award: Albert Broccoli Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Danny Kaye Special Achievement Award: Ben Burtt, Richard L Anderson (Sound effects, Raiders Of The Lost Ark) Gordon E Sawyer Award: Joseph B Walker 95

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1982 Picture: Gandhi Director: Richard Attenborough, Gandhi Actor: Ben Kingsley, Gandhi Actress: Meryl Streep, Sophie’s Choice Supporting Actor: Louis Gossett Jr, An Officer And A Gentleman Supporting Actress: Jessica Lange, Tootsie Original Screenplay: John Briley, Gandhi Adapted Screenplay: Costa-Gavras, Donald Stewart, Missing Cinematography: Billy Williams, Ronnie Taylor, Gandhi Editing: John Bloom, Gandhi Art Direction: Stuart Craig, Bob Laing, Michael Seirton, Gandhi Costume Design: John Mollo, Bhanu Athaiya, Gandhi Sound: Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don Digirolamo, Gene Cantamessa, E.T. Sound Effects Editing: Charles L Campbell, Ben Burtt, E.T. Visual Effects: Carlo Rambaldi, Dennis Muren, Kenneth F Smith, E.T. Make-Up: Sarah Monzani, Michèle Burke, Quest For Fire Foreign Film: To Begin Again (Jose Luis Garci), Spain Score, Original: John Williams, E.T. Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Henry Mancini, Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria Original Song: Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Saint-Marie,Will Jennings, ‘Up Where We Belong’, An Officer And A Gentleman Short Animated: Tango Short Live Action: A Shocking Accident Documentary Feature: Just Another Missing Kid Documentary Short: If You Love This Planet Honorary Awards: Mickey Rooney Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award:Walter Mirisch Gordon E Sawyer Award: John O Aalberg 1983 Picture: Terms Of Endearment Director: James L Brooks, Terms Of Endearment 96

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Actor: Robert Duvall, Tender Mercies Actress: Shirley MacLaine, Terms Of Endearment Supporting Actor: Jack Nicholson, Terms Of Endearment Supporting Actress: Linda Hunt, The Year Of Living Dangerously Original Screenplay: Horton Foote, Tender Mercies Adapted Screenplay: James L Brooks, Terms Of Endearment Cinematography: Sven Nykvist, Fanny And Alexander Editing: Glenn Farr, Lisa Fruchtman, Stephen A Rotter,Tom Rolf, Douglas Steward, The Right Stuff Art Direction: Anna Asp, Fanny And Alexander Costume Design: Marik Vos, Fanny And Alexander Sound: Mark Berger,Tom Scott, Randy Thorn, David MacMillan, The Right Stuff Sound Effects Editing: Jay Broeckelheide, The Right Stuff Visual Effects: Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, Phil Tippett, Return Of The Jedi Foreign Film: Fanny And Alexander (Ingmar Bergman), Sweden Score, Original: Bill Conti, The Right Stuff Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, Yentl Original Song: Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey, Irene Cara, ‘Flashdance:What a Feeling’, Flashdance Short Animated: Sundae In New York Short Live Action: Boys And Girls Documentary Feature: He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’ Documentary Short: Flamenco At 5:15 Honorary Awards: Hal Roach Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Mike Frankovich Gordon E Sawyer Award: John G Frayne 1984 Picture: Amadeus Director: Milos Forman, Amadeus Actor: F Murray Abraham, Amadeus Actress: Sally Field, Places In The Heart Supporting Actor: Haing S Ngor, The Killing Fields Supporting Actress: Peggy Ashcroft, A Passage To India 97

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Original Screenplay: Robert Benton, Places In The Heart Adapted Screenplay: Peter Shaffer, Amadeus Cinematography: Chris Menges, The Killing Fields Editing: Jim Clark, The Killing Fields Art Direction: Patrizia Von Brandenstein, Karel Cerny, Amadeus Costume Design:Theodor Pistek, Amadeus Sound: Mark Berger,Tom Scott,Todd Boekelheide, Chris Newman, Amadeus Sound Effects Editing: Kay Rose, The River Visual Effects: Dennis Muren, Michael McAlister, Lorne Peterson, George Gibbs, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom Make-Up: Paul LeBlanc, Dick Smith, Amadeus Foreign Film: Dangerous Moves (Richard Dembo), Switzerland Score, Original: Maurice Jarre, A Passage To India Score, Adaptation Or Original Song: Prince, Purple Rain Original Song: Stevie Wonder, ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’, The Woman In Red Short Animated: Charade Short Live Action: Up Documentary Feature: The Times Of Harvey Milk Documentary Short: The Stone Carvers Honorary Awards: James Stewart,The National Endowment for the Arts Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: David L Wolper Gordon E Sawyer Award: Linwood G Dunn 1985 Picture: Out Of Africa Director: Sidney Pollack, Out Of Africa Actor:William Hurt, Kiss Of The Spiderwoman Actress: Geraldine Page, The Trip To Bountiful Supporting Actor: Don Ameche, Cocoon Supporting Actress: Anjelica Huston, Prizzi’s Honor Original Screenplay: Earl W Wallace,William Kelley, Pamela Wallace, Witness Adapted Screenplay: Kurt Luedtke, Out Of Africa 98

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Cinematography: David Watkin, Out Of Africa Editing:Thom Noble, Witness Art Direction: Stephen Grimes, Josie MacAvin, Out Of Africa Costume Design: Emi Wada, Ran Sound: Chris Jenkins, Gary Alexander, Larry Stensvold, Peter Handford, Out Of Africa Sound Effects Editing: Charles L Campbell, Robert Rutledge, Back To The Future Visual Effects: Ken Ralston, Ralph McQuarrie, Scott Farrar, David Berry, Cocoon Make-Up: Michael Westmore, Zoltan Elek, Mask Foreign Film: The Official Story (Luis Puenzo), Argentina Score, Original: John Barry, Out Of Africa Original Song: Lionel Richie, ‘Say You, Say Me’, White Nights Short Animated: Anna And Bella Short Live Action: Molly’s Pilgrim Documentary Feature: Broken Rainbow Documentary Short: Witness To War: Dr Charlie Clements Honorary Awards: Paul Newman, Alex North, John H Whitney Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers 1986 Picture: Platoon Director: Oliver Stone, Platoon Actor: Paul Newman, The Color Of Money Actress: Marlee Matlin, Children Of A Lesser God Supporting Actor: Michael Caine, Hannah And Her Sisters Supporting Actress: Dianne Wiest, Hannah And Her Sisters Original Screenplay:Woody Allen, Hannah And Her Sisters Adapted Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, A Room With A View Cinematography: Chris Menges, The Mission Editing: Claire Simpson, Platoon Art Direction: Gianni Quaranta, Brian Ackland-Snow, Brian Savegar, Elio Altmura, A Room With A View Costume Design: Jenny Beaven, John Bright, A Room With A View 99

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Sound: John Wilkinson, Richard Rodgers, Charles Grenzbach, Simon Kaye, Platoon Sound Effects Editing: Don Sharpe, Aliens Visual Effects: Robert Skotak, Stan Winston, John Richardson, Suzanne Benson, Aliens Make-Up: Chris Walas, Stephan Dupuis, The Fly Foreign Film: The Assault (Fons Rademakers),The Netherlands Score, Original: Herbie Hancock, ‘Round Midnight Original Song: Giorgio Moroder,Tom Whitlock, ‘Take My Breath Away’, Top Gun Short Animated: A Greek Tragedy Short Live Action: Precious Images Documentary Feature: Down And Out In America; Artie Shaw, Time Is All You’ve Got (tie) Documentary Short: Woman – For America, For The World Honorary Awards: Ralph Bellamy, E M ‘Al’ Lewis Thalberg Award: Steven Spielberg 1987 Picture: The Last Emperor Director: Bernardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor Actor: Michael Douglas, Wall Street Actress: Cher, Moonstruck Supporting Actor: Sean Connery, The Untouchables Supporting Actress: Olympia Dukakis, Moonstruck Original Screenplay: John Patrick Shanley, Moonstruck Adapted Screenplay: Mark Peploe, Bernardo Bertolucci, The Last Emperor Cinematography:Vittorio Storaro, The Last Emperor Editing: Gabriella Cristiani, The Last Emperor Art Direction: Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Bruno Cesari, Osvaldo Desideri, The Last Emperor Costume Design: James Acheson, The Last Emperor Sound: Bill Rowe, Ivan Sharrock, The Last Emperor Sound Effects Editing: Stephen Flick, John Pospisil, RoboCop Visual Effects: Dennis Muren,William George, Harley Jessup, Kenneth Smith, Innerspace 100

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Make-Up: Rick Baker, Harry And The Hendersons Foreign Film: Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel), Denmark Score, Original: Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, Cong Su, The Last Emperor Original Song: Franke Previte, John De Nicola, Donald Markowitz, ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’, Dirty Dancing Short Animated: The Man Who Planted Trees Short Live Action: Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall Documentary Feature: The Ten Year Lunch Documentary Short: Young At Heart Thalberg Award: Billy Wilder Gordon E Sawyer Award: Fred Hynes 1988 Picture: Rain Man Director: Barry Levinson, Rain Man Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man Actress: Jodie Foster, The Accused Supporting Actor: Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda Supporting Actress: Geena Davis, The Accidental Tourist Original Screenplay: Ronald Bass, Barry Morrow, Rain Man Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Dangerous Liaisons Cinematography: Peter Biziou, Mississippi Burning Editing: Arthur Schmidt, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Art Direction: Stuart Craig, Peter Young, Dangerous Liaisons Costume Design: James Acheson, Dangerous Liaisons Sound: Les Fresholtz, Dick Alexander,Vern Poore,Willie D Burton, Bird Sound Effects Editing: Charles L Campbell, Louis L Edelman, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Visual Effects: Ken Ralston, Richard Willliams, Edward Jones, George Gibbs, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Make-Up:Ve Neill, Steve LaPorte, Robert Short, Beetlejuice Foreign Film: Pelle The Conqueror (Billie August), Denmark Score, Original: Dave Grusin, The Milagro Beanfield War Original Song: Carly Simon, ‘Let the River Run’, Working Girl Short Animated: Tin Toy 101

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Short Live Action: The Appointments Of Dennis Jennings Documentary Feature: Hotel Terminus:The Life And Times Of Klaus Barbie Documentary Short: You Don’t Have To Die Honorary Awards: Eastman Kodak,The National Film Board of Canada Special Achievement Award: Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) Gordon E Sawyer Award: Gordon Henry Cook 1989 Picture: Driving Miss Daisy Director: Oliver Stone, Born On The Fourth Of July Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, My Left Foot Actress: Jessica Tandy, Driving Miss Daisy Supporting Actor: Denzel Washington, Glory Supporting Actress: Brenda Fricker, My Left Foot Original Screenplay:Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society Adapted Screenplay: Alfred Uhry, Driving Miss Daisy Cinematography: Freddie Francis, Glory Editing: David Brenner, Joe Hutshing, Born On The Fourth Of July Art Direction: Anton Furst, Peter Young, Batman Costume Design: Phyllis Dalton, Henry V Sound: Gregg C Rudloff, Elliot Tyson, Russell Williams II, David O Mitchell, Glory Sound Effects Editing: Ben Burtt, Richard Hymns, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade Visual Effects: John Bruno, Dennis Muren, Hoyt Yeatman, Dennis Skotak, The Abyss Make-Up: Manlio Rochetti, Lynn Barber, Kevin Haney, Driving Miss Daisy Foreign Film: Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore), Italy Score, Original: Alan Menken, The Little Mermaid Original Song: Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, ‘Under The Sea’, The Little Mermaid Short Animated: Balance 102

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Short Live Action: Work Experience Documentary Feature: Common Threads, Stories From The Quilt Documentary Short: The Johnstown Flood Honorary Awards: Akira Kurosawa Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Howard W Koch Gordon E Sawyer Award: Gordon Pierre Angenieux

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1990 – 2000:The New Establishment

1990 saw the release of expensive, eagerly anticipated films from two of the leading lights of the Movie Brat generation. These films epitomised the compromise that New Hollywood had come to with the multinational corporations that now ran the movie business.The film-makers that had briefly dominated in the Seventies, with their personal visions, now found themselves directors-for-hire.The irony is that the studios wanted these directors to make expensive pictures. Sure you can continue to work with us, the executives seemed to be saying, so long as you make big, event pictures. It’s the smaller, more intimate movies that you want to make that are the problem. So Francis Ford Coppola reunited once again with the Corleone family for The Godfather, Part III, and tried not to admit to himself that he was no longer in the movie business but in the franchise business (albeit the classiest franchise of them all). And Brian De Palma, after a decade and a half of peaks and troughs, most recently one of each (The Untouchables [1987], followed by Casualties Of War [1989]), wound up helming the adaptation of the most talked-about book of its time, Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire Of The Vanities. Both men took on the projects against their better judgement and for pragmatic reasons – Coppola to pay off debts that had been mounting since Apocalypse Now, De Palma to get back in the saddle after the commercial failure of 104

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Casualties, which he regarded as his best work. Both pictures were designed by their sponsoring studios (Paramount for Godfather, Warner Bros for Bonfire) to be their big hitters for Christmas 1990, and the awards season that would follow. Although both had their post-production schedules dramatically conflated to meet long-advertised release dates, the studios were confident that the paying public would come out for films with big stars and big budgets, made by ‘name’ directors, and that assumed critical approval would translate into awards. It didn’t quite turn out that way. As Julie Salamon explains in her book about the making of The Bonfire Of The Vanities, The Devil’s Candy, some time between inception and release of the film, there was a climate change regarding the perception of big budget movies. For the press, the numbers, not the film, became the story. The artistic intentions of Coppola and De Palma were overlooked in favour of accounts of the ever-increasing costs of film-making. Although The Godfather, Part III was released to generally respectful reviews and decent box office, The Bonfire Of The Vanities was an unmitigated critical and commercial disaster. Its attempt to adapt Wolfe’s garrulous, hysterical prose style resulted in a cartoonish farce that was as unfunny as it was in questionable taste. In a season that was less a wake-up call and more like a bucket of freezing cold water thrown in the faces of studio execs, the big winners were unpredictable. John Hughes’ frenetic and cheap Home Alone (from which, much to their subsequent embarrassment,Warner’s had jumped ship just weeks shy of commencing shooting) was the biggest hit, closely followed by a movie that Kevin Costner, a rising star in the Gary Cooper mould, had staked his burgeoning reputation on. While shooting, Dances With Wolves had been something of an industry joke, with Costner being derided for his 105

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pretensions – a three-hour Western … with Sioux dialogue and subtitles?!? – and the picture compared to Michael Cimino’s expensive folly by being dubbed ‘Kevin’s Gate’. But critics and audiences mostly warmed to this visually impressive, thematically humanistic tale, with something of a David Lean epic about it. Its elegiac, overdue revisionism was, predictably perhaps, preferred by the Academy to Scorsese’s violent, foul-mouthed, but no less epic, GoodFellas, which was the choice of most critics as the best film of the year. So once again Scorsese lost out at the Oscars® to an actor-turned-director. Coppola was also nominated for Best Director but, in what now seems a symbolic snub, The Godfather, Part III won none of its seven nominations and GoodFellas only one (for Joe Pesci’s ferocious, careerdefining performance), while Dances With Wolves virtually swept the board. The subsequent careers of both Scorsese and Coppola have been marked by movies treading water. Scorsese has at least kept busy and such films as Casino (1995) and Kundun (1997) are not without interest and his long gestating Gangs Of New York (2002) finally saw the light of day (of which, more later). In Coppola’s case, he seems to have simply lost interest in directing after the commercial success of his flashy, knockabout Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and his best work post-1990 has arguably been as a producer, especially of his daughter Sofia’s The Virgin Suicides (1999). The re-release of an expanded Apocalypse Now in 2001 was a painful reminder of more ambitious times. Briefly the leading lights of the New Hollywood, the movies of De Palma, Coppola and Scorsese never consistently made enough money for them to ever become the New Establishment (something that probably rankles with Coppola rather more than De Palma or Scorsese).This was 106

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not the problem with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, although both rather lost the plot in the late Eighties. The Lucas-produced Howard The Duck (1986) and Willow (1988), and Spielberg’s Hook (1991) in particular, tested the patience of audiences and contributed to the scepticism surrounding large budgets at the turn of the decade (Hook cost around $60 million and looks grotesque). And while both, as producers and directors, had built a body of work that had transformed Hollywood and made them two of its most important figures, the approval of their peers eluded them. Spielberg especially felt hurt that his self-conscious attempts to direct more ‘important’ movies were looked down upon by the critical establishment. The Color Purple (1985) was well regarded and did reasonable box office. There were eleven Oscar® nominations but, vindictively, not one for the director, and the film went home empty-handed, tying with The Turning Point (1977) as the film with most nominations and no wins.Two years later, his superb adaptation of J G Ballard’s wartime memoir Empire Of The Sun (1987) went completely ignored by the Academy who favoured Bertolucci’s frankly inferior The Last Emperor. At the end of the Eighties, Spielberg and Lucas must have been experiencing a major case of déjà vu as they collaborated on the third Indiana Jones movie (… And The Last Crusade, 1989) their efforts to establish their credentials in ‘serious’ moviemaking seemingly on hold in favour of re-cementing their box-office primacy. Hook did not figure in the Oscars® for 1991. This was not the only good call by the Academy in the early Nineties. In fact, in a run of form unparalleled in recent memory, starting in 1991 the Oscars® would get it right for three years running. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) made history on three counts: by becoming the first out-and-out horror movie to win Best Picture; by joining It Happened 107

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One Night and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in winning all five top awards; and by being the first Best Picture winner to be commercially available on video cassette before winning. Something of a surprise winner at the time, looking back it’s hard to see how there could have been much uncertainty. Jonathan Demme’s hugely successful breakthrough picture (which should have been Something Wild in 1986) is much the strongest of the nominees, although the absence of Thelma & Louise from the Best Picture hopefuls still looks like a serious oversight.The Academy was also on the money with the technical awards, Oliver Stone’s hysterical JFK deservedly winning for cinematography (although Silence’s Tak Fujimoto would also have been a worthy winner) and editing. The following year Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, part deconstruction, part celebration of the Western, was Best Picture. Unforgiven’s only serious challenger was Neil Jordan’s surprise – in more ways than one – hit The Crying Game, a film whose Best Original Screenplay Oscar® was the least it merited. In an extremely strong Best Actor field, Al Pacino’s win for the sentimental Scent Of A Woman was redolent of Paul Newman’s eventual victory insofar as it was for one of his lesser-nominated performances. Most of his previous six nominations were for better performances and his nomination for Dick Tracy rather than The Godfather, Part III in 1990 was just bizarre. If Eastwood’s Best Director Oscar® was similarly something of a career-acknowledging award, at least it was for one of his very best films. Eastwood was never a Movie Brat, having already been a TV and movie actor for fifteen years before finding fame as the ‘man with no name’, and his directorial style is one of efficiency and economy that is a prairie away from Coppola’s operatics or Spielberg’s roller coasters; the likes of High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) are 108

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still compelling and without a frame of fat. But he has been a more consistent moneymaker than the former and a better manager of budgets than both. The 1992 Oscars® recognised this, and the Academy embraced Unforgiven as the work of a mature artist. ‘Mature Artist’ were not words being associated with Steven Spielberg in the summer of 1993 when his latest box-office juggernaut Jurassic Park was unleashed. Thankfully abandoning the mawkish touchy-feely tendencies of Hook, Spielberg here displayed a mastery of kinetic set-pieces that, coupled with his now patented ‘sense of wonder’, made Jurassic Park his most pleasing work in years and within six months of release the most successful film of all time. But ‘mature’? At the same time as editing Jurassic Park, he was also shooting his next film, one that he had been intending to make, as either director or producer, for several years. Spielberg had often talked about certain films being ‘personal’ to him, and there is certainly a respect for, and humility towards, the ‘ordinary’ individual in such films as Close Encounters and E.T. that manages to coexist with the surrounding light shows. But there is clearly something so genuinely felt about Schindler’s List (1993) that marks it out from his other ‘prestige’ adaptations and, indeed, from just about everything else that Hollywood had to offer in the Nineties.What lay behind the thinking of the Universal executive who tried to talk him out of it, who offered to make a multimillion dollar donation to any Holocaust memorial that Spielberg wanted to nominate rather than actually let him make the picture? Was he fearing that this marked the end of the gravy train for him and his Guccishod kind, that Spielberg would be lost forever to some mad artistic folly? Whatever, Schindler’s List stands in opposition to such naked cynicism. It is a film that does not convince everyone, and there are those who believe that 109

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any reconstruction of the Holocaust is inherently wrong, no matter how heartfelt, how carefully crafted the work. There is certainly the occasional off note, especially the scene when a dozen or more terrified naked women are herded into a concentration camp shower – they and we expecting them to be killed – only for water and not gas to rush from the walls. It is a terrible moment, as it is surely meant to be, but one that leaves an aftertaste and a question mark over Spielberg’s judgement. It serves no narrative function, and one suspects its intended effect is cathartic, like the decapitated head rolling from the sunken boat in Jaws. It’s a shock moment, a movie moment, and as such it threatens to cheapen the whole picture. But for the most part Spielberg keeps his showman instincts in check and Schindler’s List is more than the sum of its, occasionally misjudged, parts. Critics and the Academy queued up to honour Spielberg during the awards season for 1993. He bestrode the Oscars®. Schindler’s List won seven, Jurassic Park three. 1993 was an exceptionally strong year, and it is the measure of Jane Campion’s The Piano that it still won three awards on a night that was to all intents and purposes a foregone conclusion. 1993 also saw Tom Hanks win Best Actor, for what is routinely described as ‘the AIDS drama’ Philadelphia. Oscar’s elevation of Hanks, a talented light comedian, into industry heavyweight and prestige picture star is one of the most curious developments in recent Academy history. He had been nominated once before, for Big (1988), a charming movie that he certainly carried. It was at the ceremony for the 1988 awards that producer Peter Guber first approached Hanks to be the lead in The Bonfire Of The Vanities, the first, albeit faltering step, in what would become one of the career transformations of the Nineties. It is not intended as a slight to say that it is Hanks’ 110

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inherent amiability that marked him out for the leads in both Bonfire and Philadelphia. By mainstream Hollywood standards, these were controversial projects, and also expensive. The studios were looking to cast a non-threatening personality, and personalities don’t come less threatening than Hanks’ screen persona. Miscast in Bonfire, he is effective enough in Philadelphia, although the deck is stacked in his favour with a succession of show-stopping scenes. Hanks began to ride a wave of success. In the years since Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner had displayed a tendency towards hubris and had made a succession of mediocre pictures. His star was waning (and would wane much further as the decade proceeded) and there was a vacancy for the role of Movie Star Everyman.Yet this does not go all the way in explaining the tremendous success in 1994 of Robert Zemekis’ Forrest Gump. In the title role of a simpleton who lives through and is the catalyst for some of the defining moments of post-war America (he meets Kennedy, Nixon, invests in Apple computers and invents the jogging craze) Hanks is all jerky movements and southern drawl.The movie is well made and funny in parts. But how it came to be the biggest money maker of the year is a total mystery, as is its intended ‘message’ (if any). Rightwingers saw in Gump a valediction of the ‘ignorance is bliss’ principle, as the unspoilt idiot travels the globe unwittingly spreading goodness, while his more worldly acquaintances suffer disease, deformity and death. Those on the Left regarded it as an ironic comment on American values, and there is certainly enough wit in Zemekis’ track record (the Back To The Future trilogy, Romancing The Stone) to give this some credence. It is perhaps this very ambiguity which served it well at the box office, allowing anyone to gain something by looking at the world through Forrest Gump’s eyes. Or maybe it was just the great soundtrack. 111

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The 1994 Oscars® were portrayed in the media as being a straight fight between the old fashioned values of Gump and the hip, postmodern cynicism of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). Faced with a choice not dissimilar to Dances With Wolves vs. GoodFellas four years earlier, there was only going to be one winner, and Pulp Fiction had to be content with just one award, deservedly for Tarantino and writing partner Roger Avary’s screenplay.Tarantino did not hide his disappointment and his gracelessness was not forgotten when his third and best film, Jackie Brown (1997) would be almost entirely overlooked in the nominations three years later. Briefly the brightest star in US cinema, and certainly the catalyst for the incorporation of an ‘indie’ aesthetic into mainstream film, Tarantino ended the Nineties ploughing an eccentric and indulgent furrow acting in friends’ movies.Amongst all of this, the best of the nominated films of 1994, Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s atypical story The Shawshank Redemption, went unrewarded. The indie sensibility was not much in evidence at the 1995 Oscars®, where a group of lacklustre films fought it out for Best Picture, with Mel Gibson’s rollicking Braveheart triumphant.The following year, however, the talk was all of how the independent sector was challenging the Hollywood system for the first time in nearly thirty years. Only one of the nominated Best Pictures, Jerry Maguire (1996), was 100% Hollywood studio product.The others – The English Patient, Fargo, Secrets And Lies and Shine – were either produced by independents and/or came from abroad. Apparently we were now in a ‘post-Tarantino’ age, when quirky and innovative films would win both critical acclaim and large audiences. But such talk was deceptive. None of these films looked like indie movies.There is none of the formal innovation of Pulp Fiction in any of them. 112

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True, the Coen brothers had been making pleasing, genrebending comedies and dramas for over ten years, but Fargo was by some distance their most classical and formally conventional picture at that time. Shine combined the Oscar® favourite themes of biopic and disability. Secrets And Lies is perhaps more surprising, but the US critics have always had a soft spot for British social realism, and this is one of Mike Leigh’s most accessible pictures. And while it is true that 20th Century Fox dropped The English Patient at an advanced stage of pre-production, allowing the rapidly emerging Miramax to step in and make it technically an independent production, the finished article looks every inch a prestige studio picture, and was accordingly expensive (approximately $60 million). Miramax, originally a distribution operation established in 1979 by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein had been elevated to the ‘minimajor’ league when acquired by the Disney Corporation for around $75 million in 1993. Since then it had concentrated on breaking down the barriers between ‘art-house’ and ‘quality’ productions while its subsidiary Dimension Films produced lower-budget genre films (such as the Scream trilogy) to generate cash. While its box-office performance and Oscar® triumph might have given studio execs pause for thought before signing the cheques for next summer’s effects-led blockbuster, to the general public The English Patient was precisely the sort of movie the studios had done well for decades – a well-acted period romance. And it was period romance (note the absence of ‘well acted’) of a sort, and this time very much a studio production, that swept the board the following year.What is there to say about Titanic (1997)? Not much, except that its eleven Oscars® in 1997 represented a collective sigh of relief by the industry, and especially the studios responsible, Fox and Paramount, who were in the hole by over $200 113

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million before the film was released. Although sometimes shy of honouring huge money makers, this year the Academy members left their self-effacement at home. No doubt a logistical triumph of sorts, Titanic is a hollow movie, with incident and ciphers where script and character should be. It is a depressing fact that its record-equalling tally – a tie with Ben-Hur – was achieved without winning any acting Oscars® and not even being nominated in the screenplay category. James Cameron’s blustering, obnoxious acceptance speech for winning the directing Oscar® deserves a plinth of its own in Oscar’s Hall of Shame. If there truly was a ‘King of the World’ in Hollywood at this time, a monarch of the New Establishment, then it was Spielberg. Although the monster sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and the slavery drama Amistad (both 1997) were misfires, he bounced back with Saving Private Ryan (1998), yet another WWII picture and overall a pretty conventional one. Yet the astonishing battle scenes, filmed in a vérité style, looked and sounded nerve-shreddingly authentic and Spielberg was rightly named Best Director at the 1998 Oscars®. By this time, though, he wasn’t looking for the approval of his peers, but his employees, having become a studio head by forming DreamWorks SKG with friends David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg (from Disney). Ryan was a DreamWorks film, and the first from the studio to be nominated for Best Picture. Saving Private Ryan was the biggest hit of the year and further evidence of Tom Hanks’ knack for spotting winners and the warmth in which audiences held him. For most of the latter part of 1998 it assumed to be a cert for the Best Picture, with perhaps Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), a well-plotted and thoughtful satire on celebrity its main competitor. But towards the end of the year Shakespeare In Love (1998) opened. Arriving without the usual months of 114

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advance hype, too often counter-productive, it was greeted as offering a charming, light alternative to the fairly heavy fare of recent months (as well as Ryan, Terrance Malick’s WWII meditation The Thin Red Line, Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust fable Life Is Beautiful and Shekar Kapur’s costume drama as conspiracy thriller Elizabeth were the main award contenders of the season). Armed with good reviews and strong word of mouth Miramax, the film’s producers who had also picked up the Italian Life Is Beautiful for distribution, set about an expensive Oscar® campaign that would become as talked about as any of the films. Estimates as to how much Miramax actually spent vary, but it was certainly millions of dollars, with some informed guesses running as high as $14 million. They certainly got their money’s worth, as Shakespeare In Love garnered 13 nominations, with Life Is Beautiful picking up seven along the way. Saving Private Ryan had eleven nominations. By the time awards night came around Ryan’s foregone success of just a few months earlier seemed a long way away, and, incredibly for a romantic comedy (ahhhh, but a period romantic comedy) Shakespeare In Love won seven awards including Best Picture, Ryan’s five being mostly in the technical categories. Although popular with both critics and audiences, Shakespeare In Love is a lesser movie than most of the others nominated and certainly not as clever or witty as it thinks it is. It flatters its audience with what passes for wit but is merely a parade of gags with historical knobs on.The direction is pedestrian and the acting highly variable (with Geoffrey Rush’s nominated turn as an Elizabethan impresario particularly excruciating). Most depressing was the Actress Oscar® going to Gwyneth Paltrow a performer who gets less interesting with each passing movie, especially seen against the turns by fellow nominees Emily Watson 115

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(Hilary And Jackie) and Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth). Elizabeth and The Thin Red Line were the big losers on the night, winning only one Oscar® between them.They join a long line of excellent movies to go virtually unrewarded by the Academy in the face of poorer opposition being overpraised. The DreamWorks contingent felt cheated by the 1998 Oscars® (although, in truth, they got the awards Ryan truly deserved and no more), and believed they had been wrongfooted by Miramax’s aggressive campaigning. This would not be the case in 1999 when their American Beauty was the favourite for most of the awards season. On Oscar® night however, with three awards to go – Actor, Director, Picture – the big winner was … The Matrix. This technically brilliant science fiction caper had picked up all four awards for which it had been nominated, including beating the vacuous Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace for the special effects gong. In terms of the anticipated big winners, American Beauty and The Cider House Rules had won two a piece and, although so far unrewarded, The Insider, The Sixth Sense and The Green Mile were all still vying for the top honours. Within ten minutes, the story was all about DreamWorks’ first Best Picture winner and the triumph of British débutante director Sam Mendes. One would be hard pressed to begrudge American Beauty its strong showing in most years as it is a thoughtful and confident piece of work that, at the very least, has something to say about modern America, rather than Elizabethan England. But 1999 was an exceptional year for American film. Of the nominees, the Best Picture should have been The Insider, Michael Mann’s compelling and rewarding account of the power of the tobacco corporations.Woody Allen’s Sweet And Lowdown (1999) was a flawless, if relatively minor, work and Being John Malkovich 116

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(1999) was a critical hit that did decent box office and whose originality was too much even for the Academy to ignore, winning director and screenplay nominations. Spike Lee’s best film to date, the bristling, sprawling Summer Of Sam (1999), didn’t receive a single nomination – something of real substance to feed Lee’s antagonism towards the Hollywood establishment. All of this, plus the meagre three nominations begrudgingly offered to the very best film of the year, and one of the best of the Nineties, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), and American Beauty’s Oscar® triumph looks a little less gleaming, a little more tainted by politiking and making up for past errors. And it was DreamWorks’ night again twelve months later when Gladiator emerged victorious from what was commonly held to be the most open Oscar® field in years. After a glut of interesting and challenging movies in 1999, 2000 saw a dearth of originality and the Academy, not for the first time, rewarded those old fashioned virtues of strong storytelling, period setting and massive commercial success. In retrospect Gladiator is perhaps most notable for the industrial rehabilitation of Ridley Scott, who suffered a torrid time in the 1990s and who has subsequently worked like a galley slave himself on prestige actioneers Hannibal (2001) and Black Hawk Down (2002). But Scott did not pick up the Best Director statuette that night, which instead went to Steven Soderbergh – another auteur working his way out of a rut – for Traffic, a serious and ambiguous examination of the drugs business. Indeed, Soderbergh was nominated twice, as his popular Erin Brockovich had many admirers, largely for the director’s handling of star Julia Roberts, who was one of the shoo-in winners on the night. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the class of 2000 was the acclaim given to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Having been previously ignored by the Academy 117

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(despite his Sense And Sensibility being a Best Picture nominee in 1995) the massive critical and box-office success of this Chinese/Taiwanese/US production catapulted Lee into the big leagues and ensured that his film would be in the running for major awards. Although it lost out on the night, it is hoped that the breakout of this film from the art-house circuit over the $100 million barrier will continue to resonate with Academy voters in the years ahead, encouraging them to take a gamble on less traditional Oscar® fare.

The Winners 1990 Picture: Dances With Wolves Director: Kevin Costner, Dances With Wolves Actor: Jeremy Irons, Reversal Of Fortune Actress: Kathy Bates, Misery Supporting Actor: Joe Pesci, GoodFellas Supporting Actress:Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost Original Screenplay: Bruce Joel Rubin, Ghost Adapted Screenplay: Michael Blake, Dances With Wolves Cinematography: Dean Semler, Dances With Wolves Editing: Neil Travis, Dances With Wolves Art Direction: Richard Sylbert, Rick Simpson, Dick Tracy Costume Design: Franca Squarciapino, Cyrano de Bergerac Sound: Jeffrey Perkins, Bill W Benton, Greg Watkins, Russell Williams II, Dances With Wolves Sound Effects Editing: Cecelia Hall, George Watters II, The Hunt For Red October Visual Effects: Eric Brevig, Rob Bottin,Tim McGovern, Alex Funke, Total Recall Make-Up: John Caglione Jr, Doug Drexler, Dick Tracy Foreign Film: Journey Of Hope (Xavier Koller), Switzerland Score, Original: John Barry, Dances With Wolves Original Song: Stephen Sondheim,‘Sooner Or Later’, Dick Tracy 118

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Short Animated: Creature Comforts Short Live Action: The Lunch Date Documentary Feature: American Dream Documentary Short: Days Of Waiting Honorary Awards: Sophia Loren, Myrna Loy Thalberg Award: Richard D Zanuck, David Brown Gordon E Sawyer Award: Stefan Kudelski 1991 Picture: The Silence Of The Lambs Director: Jonathan Demme, The Silence Of The Lambs Actor: Anthony Hopkins, The Silence Of The Lambs Actress: Jodie Foster, The Silence Of The Lambs Supporting Actor: Jack Palance, City Slickers Supporting Actress: Mercedes Ruehl, The Fisher King Original Screenplay: Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise Adapted Screenplay:Ted Tally, The Silence Of The Lambs Cinematography: Robert Richardson, JFK Editing: Joe Hutshing, Pietro Scalia, JFK Art Direction: Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh, Bugsy Costume Design: Albert Wolsky, Bugsy Sound:Tom Johnson, Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Lee Orloff, Terminator 2 Sound Effects Editing: Gary Rydstrom, Gloria S Borders, Terminator 2 Visual Effects: Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Gene Warren Jnr, Robert Skotak, Terminator 2 Make-Up: Stan Winston, Jeff Dawn, Terminator 2 Foreign Film: Mediterraneo (Gabriele Salvatores), Italy Score, Original: Alan Menken, Beauty And The Beast Original Song: Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, ‘Beauty And The Beast’, Beauty And The Beast Short Animated: Manipulation Short Live Action: Session Man Documentary Feature: In The Shadow Of The Stars Documentary Short: Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons And Our Environment 119

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Honorary Awards: Satyajit Ray Thalberg Award: George Lucas Gordon E Sawyer Award: Ray Harryhausen 1992 Picture: Unforgiven Director: Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven Actor: Al Pacino, Scent Of A Woman Actress: Emma Thompson, Howard’s End Supporting Actor: Gene Hackman, Unforgiven Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny Original Screenplay: Neil Jordan, The Crying Game Adapted Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Howard’s End Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot, A River Runs Through It Editing: Joel Cox, Unforgiven Art Direction: Luciana Arrighi, Ian Whittaker, Howard’s End Costume Design: Eiko Ishioka, Bram Stoker’s Dracula Sound: Chris Jenkins, Doug Hemphill, Mark Smith, Simon Kaye, The Last Of The Mohicans Sound Effects Editing:Tom McCarthy, David Stone, Bram Stoker’s Dracula Visual Effects: Ken Ralston, Doug Chiang, Doug Smythe,Tom Woodruff Jnr, Death Becomes Her Make-Up: Michéle Burke, Greg Cannom, Matthew W Mungle, Bram Stoker’s Dracula Foreign Film: Indochine (Régis Wargnier), France Score, Original: Alan Menken, Aladdin Original Song: Alan Menken,Tim Rice, ‘A Whole New World’, Aladdin Short Animated: Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase Short Live Action: Omnibus Documentary Feature: The Panama Deception Documentary Short: Educating Peter Honorary Awards: Federico Fellini Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn Gordon E Sawyer Award: Erich Kaestner 120

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1993 Picture: Schindler’s List Director: Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List Actor:Tom Hanks, Philadelphia Actress: Holly Hunter, The Piano Supporting Actor:Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive Supporting Actress: Anna Paquin, The Piano Original Screenplay: Jane Campion, The Piano Adapted Screenplay: Steve Zaillian, Schindler’s List Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, Schindler’s List Editing: Michael Kahn, Schindler’s List Art Direction: Allan Starski, Ewa Braun, Schindler’s List Costume Design: Gabriella Pescucci, The Age Of Innocence Sound: Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy, Ron Judkins, Jurassic Park Sound Effects Editing: Gary Rydstrom, Richard Hymns, Jurassic Park Visual Effects: Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Michael Lantieri, Jurassic Park Make-Up: Greg Cannom,Ve Neill,Yolanda Toussieng, Mrs Doubtfire Foreign Film: Belle Epoque (Fernando Trueba), Spain Score, Original: John Williams, Schindler’s List Original Song: Bruce Springsteen, ‘The Streets Of Philadelphia’, Philadelphia Short Animated: The Wrong Trousers Short Live Action: Black Rider Documentary Feature: I Am A Promise:The Children Of The Stanton Elementary School Documentary Short: Defending Our Lives Honorary Awards: Deborah Kerr Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Paul Newman Gordon E Sawyer Award: Petro Vlahos 1994 Picture: Forrest Gump Director: Robert Zemeckis, Forrest Gump 121

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Actor:Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump Actress: Jessica Lange, Blue Sky Supporting Actor: Martin Landau, Ed Wood Supporting Actress: Dianne Wiest, Bullets Over Broadway Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Pulp Fiction Adapted Screenplay: Eric Roth, Forrest Gump Cinematography: John Toll, Legends Of The Fall Editing: Arthur Schmidt, Forrest Gump Art Direction: Ken Adam, Carolyn Scott, The Madness Of King George Costume Design: Lizzy Gardiner,Tim Chappel, The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert Sound: Gregg Landaker, Steve Maslow, Bob Beemer, David R B MacMillan, Speed Sound Effects Editing: Stephen Hunter Flick, Speed Visual Effects: Ken Ralston, George Murphy, Stephen Rosenbaum, Allen Hall, Forrest Gump Make-Up: Rick Baker,Ve Neill,Yolanda Toussieng, Ed Wood Foreign Film: Burnt By The Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov), Russia Score, Original: Hans Zimmer, The Lion King Original Song: Elton John,Tim Rice, ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight?’, The Lion King Short Animated: Bob’s Birthday Short Live Action: Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life; Trevor (tie) Documentary Feature: Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision Documentary Short: A Time For Justice Honorary Awards: Michelangelo Antonioni, John A Bonner Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award: Quincy Jones Thalberg Award: Clint Eastwood 1995 Picture: Braveheart Director: Mel Gibson, Braveheart Actor: Nicolas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas Actress: Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking Supporting Actor: Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects 122

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Supporting Actress: Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite Original Screenplay: Christopher McQuarrie, The Usual Suspects Adapted Screenplay: Emma Thompson, Sense And Sensibility Cinematography: John Toll, Braveheart Editing: Mike Hill, Dan Hanley, Apollo 13 Art Direction: Eugenio Zanetti, Restoration Costume Design: James Acheson, Restoration Sound: Rick Dior, Steve Pederson, Scott Millan, David R B MacMillan, Apollo 13 Sound Effects Editing: Lon Bender, Per Hallberg, Braveheart Visual Effects: Scott E Anderson, Charles Gibson, Neal Scanlon, John Cox, Babe Make-Up: Peter Frampton, Paul Pattison, Lois Burwell, Braveheart Foreign Film: Antonia’s Line (Marleen Gorris),The Netherlands Score, Original Dramatic: Luis Bacalov, Il Postino Score, Original Musical Or Comedy: Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, Pocahontas Original Song: Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, ‘Colors Of The Wind’, Pocahontas Short Animated: A Close Shave Short Live Action: Lieberman In Love Documentary Feature: Anne Frank Remembered Documentary Short: One Survivor Remembers Honorary Awards: Chuck Jones, Kirk Douglas Special Achievement Award: Toy Story Gordon E Sawyer Award: Donald C Rogers 1996 Picture: The English Patient Director: Anthony Minghella, The English Patient Actor: Geoffrey Rush, Shine Actress: Frances McDormand, Fargo Supporting Actor: Cuba Gooding Jr, Jerry Maguire Supporting Actress: Juliette Binoche, The English Patient Original Screenplay: Ethan and Joel Coen, Fargo 123

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Adapted Screenplay: Billy Bob Thornton, Sling Blade Cinematography: John Seale, The English Patient Editing:Walter Murch, The English Patient Art Direction: Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan, The English Patient Costume Design: Ann Roth, The English Patient Sound:Walter Murch, Mark Berger, David Parker, Chris Newman, The English Patient Sound Effects Editing: Bruce Stambler, The Ghost And The Darkness Visual Effects:Volker Engel, Douglas Smith, Clay Pinney, Joseph Viskocil, Independence Day Make-Up: Rick Baker, David LeRoy Anderson, The Nutty Professor Foreign Film: Kolya (Jan Sverak), Czech Republic Score, Original Dramatic: Gabriel Yared, The English Patient Score, Original Musical Or Comedy: Rachel Portman, Emma Original Song: Andrew Lloyd Webber,Tim Rice, ‘You Must Love Me’, Evita Short Animated: Quest Short Live Action: Dear Diary Documentary Feature: When We Were Kings Documentary Short: Breathing Lessons: The Life And Work Of Mark O’Brien Honorary Awards: Michael Kidd Thalberg Award: Saul Zaentz 1997 Picture: Titanic Director: James Cameron, Titanic Actor: Jack Nicholson, As Good As It Gets Actress: Helen Hunt, As Good As It Gets Supporting Actor: Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting Supporting Actress: Kim Basinger, LA Confidential Original Screenplay: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting 124

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Adapted Screenplay: Brian Helgeland, Curtis Hanson, LA Confidential Cinematography: Russell Carpenter, Titanic Editing: Conrad Buff, James Cameron, Richard A Harris, Titanic Art Direction: Peter Lamont, Michael Ford, Titanic Costume Design: Deborah L Scott, Titanic Sound: Gary Rydstrom,Tom Johnson, Gary Summers, Mark Ulano, Titanic Sound Effects Editing:Tom Bellfort, Christopher Boyes, Titanic Visual Effects: Robert Legato, Mark Lasoff,Thomas L Fisher, Michael Kanfer, Titanic Make-Up: Rick Baker, David LeRoy Anderson, Men In Black Foreign Film: Karakter (Mike van Diem),The Netherlands Score, Original Dramatic: James Horner, Titanic Score, Original Musical Or Comedy: Anne Dudley, The Full Monty Original Song: James Horner,Will Jennings, ‘My Heart Will Go On’, Titanic Short Animated: Geri’s Game Short Live Action: Visas And Virtue Documentary Feature: The Long Way Home Documentary Short: A Story Of Healing Honorary Awards: Stanley Donen, Joe Lombardi Scientific and Technical Award: Gunnar P Michelson, Pete Clark Gordon E Sawyer Award: Don Iwerks 1998 Picture: Shakespeare In Love Director: Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan Actor: Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) Actress: Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare In Love Supporting Actor: James Coburn, Affliction Supporting Actress: Judi Dench, Shakespeare In Love Original Screenplay: Marc Norman,Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare In Love 125

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Adapted Screenplay: Bill Condon, Gods And Monsters Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, Saving Private Ryan Editing: Michael Kahn, Saving Private Ryan Art Direction: Martin Childs, Jill Quertier, Shakespeare In Love Costume Design: Sandy Powell, Shakespeare In Love Sound: Ronald Judkins, Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Saving Private Ryan Sound Effects Editing: Richard Hymns, Gary Rydstrom, Saving Private Ryan Visual Effects: Nicholas Brooks, Joel Hynek, Kevin Mack, Stuart Robertson, What Dreams May Come Make-Up: Jenny Shircore, Elizabeth Foreign Film: Life Is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) (Roberto Benigni), Italy Score, Original Dramatic: Nicola Piovani, Life Is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) Score, Original Musical Or Comedy: Steven Warbeck, Shakespeare In Love Original Song: Stephen Schwartz, ‘When You Believe’, Prince Of Eygpt Short Animated: Bunny Short Live Action: Election Night Documentary Feature: The Last Days Documentary Short: The Personals: Improvisations On Romance In The Golden Years Honorary Awards: Elia Kazan, David W Gray Thalberg Award: Norman Jewison 1999 Picture: American Beauty Director: Sam Mendes, American Beauty Actor: Kevin Spacey, American Beauty Actress: Hilary Swank, Boys Don’t Cry Supporting Actor: Michael Caine, The Cider House Rules Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie, “Girl, Interrupted” Original Screenplay: Alan Ball, American Beauty Adapted Screenplay: John Irving, The Cider House Rules 126

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Cinematography: Conrad L Hall, American Beauty Editing: Zach Staenberg, The Matrix Art Direction: Rick Heinrichs, Peter Young, Sleepy Hollow Costume Design: Lindy Hemming, Topsy-Turvy Sound: John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, David Campbell, David Lee, The Matrix Sound Effects Editing: Dane A Davis, The Matrix Visual Effects: John Gaeta, Janek Sirrs, Steve Courtley, Jon Thum, The Matrix Make-Up: Christine Blundell,Trefor Proud, Topsy-Turvy Foreign Film: All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar), Spain Score, Original: John Corigliano, The Red Violin Original Song: Phil Collins, ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’, Tarzan Short Animated: The Old Man And The Sea Short Live Action: My Mother Dreams The Satan’s Disciples In New York Documentary Feature: One Day In September Documentary Short: King Gimp Honorary Awards: Andrzej Wajda Thalberg Award:Warren Beatty 2000 Picture: Gladiator Director: Steven Soderbergh, Traffic Actor: Russell Crowe, Gladiator Actress: Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich Supporting Actor: Benicio Del Toro, Traffic Supporting Actress: Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock Original Screenplay: Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous Adapted Screenplay: Stephen Gaghan, Traffic Cinematography: Peter Pau, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Editing: Stephen Mirrione, Traffic Art Direction:Tim Yip, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Costume Design: Janty Yates, Gladiator Sound: Scott Millan, Bob Beemer, Ken Weston, Gladiator Sound Editing: Jon Johnson, U-571 127

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Visual Effects: John Nelson, Neil Corbould,Tim Burke, Rob Harvey, Gladiator Make-Up: Rick Baker, Gail Ryan, The Grinch Foreign Film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee), China/Taiwan Score, Original:Tan Dun, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Original Song: Bob Dylan, ‘Things Have Changed’, Wonder Boys Short Animated: Father And Daughter Short Live Action: Quiero Ser (I Want to Be …) Documentary Feature: Into The Arms Of Strangers: Stories Of The Kindertransport Documentary Short: Big Mama

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2001 – 2003:The Road to Mount Doom

Russell Crowe ended 2000 a very big star, status which his Oscar for Gladiator only consolidated. In truth, he’d been little more than a muscular pair of shoulders effectively carrying the Roman epic, but he deserved some Academy recognition for his astonishing performance in The Insider a year earlier, one which was a world away from the conventional movie heroics of Scott’s blockbuster. Crowe looked set to step up and replace the likes of Willis and Schwarzenegger in the multiplex customer’s affections with a fractionally more nuanced flavour of beefcake. And he could act too. During the Gladiator Oscar hoopla he was filming A Beautiful Mind for Ron Howard, a ‘biopic’ about John Nash, a mind-bogglingly clever mathematician tormented by mental illness, and there was such a buzz about his performance that he seemed odds-on to emulate Tom Hanks and win successive Best Actor Oscars®. But Crowe would appear to have something of the tortured genius about him and a series of PR blunders (an affair with Proof of Life (2000) co-star Meg Ryan which ended her marriage to Dennis Quaid and about which Crowe was less than contrite; a daft punch-up with the producer of the TV broadcast of the BAFTAs, at which Crowe actually won the Best Actor award) scuppered his chances when the voting got serious. In addition, towards the end of 2001 a bandwagon began 129

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rolling insisting it was time the Academy paid serious attention to black performers. No black actress had ever won the Best Actress statuette and the last black performer to be declared Best Actor had been Sidney Poitier nearly forty years earlier.The demographic of Hollywood’s audience had changed substantially in the intervening years and black audiences had made the likes of Will Smith and Denzel Washington huge stars who could ‘open’ a movie, not to mention ensure that the rather less prestige vehicles of the Wayans brothers (Scary Movie [2000], etc.) made pots of money. Smith and Washington were thus duly nominated for the 2001 awards, for Ali and Training Day respectively (Washington playing against expected type as a deeply corrupt policeman), together with Halle Berry in the actress category for the race drama Monster’s Ball. Washington’s cause was in no way harmed by Julia Roberts (his co-star in The Pelican Brief [1993]) expressing faux naïve astonishment that she had a Best Actress Oscar® but her buddie Denzel didn’t have the ultimate accolade himself (he was, of course, named Best Supporting Actor in 1989) and by the time the ceremony came around Washington had left Smith and Crowe for dust as the favourite. So while it was no surprise when Washington mounted the platform to collect the award from – guess who? – Julia Roberts, some were surprised that Berry also took top honours. While few would dispute the quality of her performance or the sincerity of the film, the feeling persists that the members of the Academy seized an opportunity to celebrate their own self-importance. Certainly Berry has not enhanced her reputation, with a series of critical and commercial failures (Gothika [2003], Catwoman [2004]) doing her – or the Academy – few favours. Despite a whispering campaign against the portrayal of 130

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its protagonist, and the misdemeanours of star Crowe, A Beautiful Mind took top honours on the night, consigning the main challenger, The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring, to the technical categories. Peter Jackson’s first chapter of Tolkein’s hulking fantasy novel had successfully managed to walk the tightrope of both massive box office and warm critical notices and while it had not been quite as commercially successful as the almost simultaneously released Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Sorcerer’s in the US), the respect accorded Jackson eclipsed the rather plodding J.K. Rowling adaptation. It was a measure of the director’s (and studio New Line’s) achievement that come Oscar® night a three hour fantasy about hobbits, elves and wizards had been joint favourite for the top prizes at the ceremony, held for the first time at the newly opened Kodak Theatre in LA. By autumn 2002, the frenzy of interest around the second Tolkein instalment, The Two Towers, had put the Harry Potter sequel in its place (although HP and the Chamber of Secrets was still a substantial hit). But while Jackson’s film was, if anything, even better received than the first episode, it was largely overlooked by the Academy. Its Best Picture nomination was a perfunctory acknowledgement, with direction, screenplay and costume design all going un-nominated – despite being in the running a year earlier – and music and cinematography also unacknowledged, despite actually winning their categories in 2001. The 2002 Oscars® were all about Miramax again. The Weinstein Brothers had bet a substantial acreage of the farm on enabling Martin Scorsese to bring his long-cherished Gangs of New York project to the screen. The director had tempted Daniel Day-Lewis out of semi-retirement with a role of a lifetime in Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting, gang leader 131

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of nineteenth century New York, and had paired him with box office hottie Leonardo DiCaprio as his nemesis. Eschewing developments in digital effects, huge sets were built at Cinecittà in Rome. Much delayed, the first public screening of around half an hour of footage at Cannes in 2002, was for many, the highlight of the festival and Miramax duly started laying the groundwork for what appeared to be their – and Scorsese’s – coronation come awards season. It didn’t quite work out that way. Although containing some of the director’s best work for years (the first twenty minutes, in particular, are phenomenal), Gangs of New York too often feels forced and fatally compromised to box office considerations. DiCaprio is no match for Day-Lewis, who carries the whole film at times apparently through force of personality, and his scenes with love interest Cameron Diaz bring the film to a shuddering halt time and again. Despite this, Miramax initially put all their Oscar® eggs in Scorsese’s basket and shamelessly beat the drum for the film among the Oscar voters, scoring a massive PR blunder by using an ‘open letter’ by director Robert Wise that endorsed Scorsese as Best Director of the year in their campaign, offending many. But as in 1998 with Shakespeare in Love, it was a less heralded film that emerged as a favourite.The film of Bob Fosse’s musical Chicago had a debutant director at the helm and a cast who were, at best, untested at carrying a film (the exception perhaps being Renée Zellweger, whose performance in Bridget Jones’s Diary [2001] had been wellliked enough to earn her a Best Actress nomination, presumably for having the ‘courage’ to – gasp! – actually gain weight for the role). The film was adored by few, enjoyed by many and disliked by hardly anyone and in the face of growing irritation with their Gangs campaign, 132

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Miramax jumped horses mid-stream and began to lobby hard. Come the night of the ceremony, and its ostentatiously shortened red carpet (Hollywood’s way of acknowledging the conflict in Iraq), it was widely assumed that Scorsese’s film was dead in the water and the contest was between Chicago and Roman Polanski’s biggest critical hit in years, The Pianist, ironically as long nurtured a project as Scorsese’s. The story goes that Harvey Weinstein had actually left the Cannes screening in boredom, then had to look on as the film won accolades across the world (including the BAFTA Best Picture) in the run up to the Oscars®. Indeed, this was how the evening panned out, with Gangs going home empty-handed, despite eleven nominations. There was genuine shock when not even Day-Lewis won, the Best Actor award instead going pointedly to Polanski’s leading man, Adrien Brody.When Polanski was also named Best Director, it looked like Miramax’s year was going to end very badly indeed, but honour was satisfied when Chicago was named Best Picture, going on to a US box office take in excess of $170 million, more than double that of Gangs. The real controversy in 2002 was provided by loose canon documentarist Michael Moore, nominated for his passionate, if unfocused, examination of US gun culture, Bowling for Columbine. Regarded as just too critical of the US to actually win, there was genuine surprise and admiration when his name was called out and on his way up to the podium he received a standing ovation from some quarters of the auditorium. However, some of the acclaim turned to abuse as, calling his fellow nominees onto the stage with him, he launched into an attack on President George W. Bush for his latest instalment in ‘the war on terror’, which would shortly lead to the collapse of the 133

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Saddam Hussein regime. His insistence that this was a ‘fictitious war’ ensured that the ceremony earned a little more air time on the international news bulletins than usual. Since the theatrical release of the first instalment of The Lord of the Rings, Jackson’s mammoth endeavour had redefined contemporary popular film-making and, not coincidentally, merchandising. New Line’s gamble was paying off handsomely – their approximately $300 million outlay on production costs had been returned by the first film alone by the time of the Oscar® ceremony in March 2002, and the US theatrical gross of the three films would exceed one billion dollars. The strategy of releasing double disc DVDs and extended editions just prior to release of the next instalment meant that the Tolkein adaptation had dominated the movie landscape for a full two years before the release of the third film, The Return of the King in December 2003. While it was therefore no surprise that it became the box-office sensation of the year, the fact that critics fell over each other to also hail it the best movie of the year was a bonus. Nominated for eleven Oscars®, the night of the 76th awards arrived with The Return of the King dragging awards and nominations from critics circles’ around the world in its wake (the red carpet was suitably reextended this year). Its only serious competition for the top prizes was Clint Eastwood’s sober, moving adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s crime novel, Mystic River, which featured a trio of outstanding performances from Sean Penn,Tim Robbins and the ever-underrated Kevin Bacon. For a time there was speculation that Eastwood would garner enough ‘anything but the hobbits’ votes to cause an upset, but on the night the film had to be content with dominating the acting categories, with long-deserved statuettes for both Penn and Robbins. Instead, in what would 134

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eventually become a rather monotonous evening, The Return of the King won every one of the eleven categories for which it was nominated, something that had never happened before, and an obvious acknowledgement of the scale of Jackson’s overall achievement, rather than ‘merely’ the one film. The engagingly modest and, frankly, scruffy director personally collected three awards. He had become the most powerful man in the movies, such was the dominance of the Rings. 2001 Picture: A Beautiful Mind Director: Ron Howard, A Beautiful Mind Actor: Denzel Washington, Training Day Actress: Halle Berry, Monster’s Ball Supporting Actor: Jim Broadbent, Iris Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind Original Screenplay: Julian Fellowes, Gosford Park Adapted Screenplay: Avika Goldsman, A Beautiful Mind Cinematography: Andrew Lesnie, The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Rings Editing: Pietro Scalia, Black Hawk Down Art Direction: Catherine Martin, Brigitte Broch, Moulin Rouge Costume Design: Catherine Martin, Angus Strathie, Moulin Rouge Sound: Mike Minkler, Myron Nettinga, Chris Munro, Black Hawk Down Sound Editing: George Watters II, Christopher Boyes, Pearl Harbor Visual Effects: Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, Alex Funke, The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring Make-Up: Peter Owen, Richard Taylor, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Foreign Film: No Man’s Land (Danis Tanovic), Bosnia & Herzegovina 135

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Score, Original: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings:The Fellowship of the Ring Original Song: Randy Newman, ‘If I Didn’t Have You’, Monsters, Inc. Animated Feature: Shrek Short Animated: For the Birds Short Live Action: the accountant Documentary Feature: Murder on a Sunday Morning Documentary Short: Thoth 2002 Picture: Chicago Director: Roman Polanski, The Pianist Actor: Adrien Brody, The Pianist Actress: Nicole Kidman, The Hours Supporting Actor: Chris Cooper, Adaptation. Supporting Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago Original Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar, Talk to Her Adapted Screenplay: Ronald Harwood, The Pianist Cinematography: Conrad L. Hall, Road to Perdition Editing: Martin Walsh, Chicago Art Direction: John Myhre, Gordon Sim, Chicago Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Chicago Sound: Mike Minkler, Dominick Tavella, David Lee, Chicago Sound Editing: Ethan Van der Ryn, Michael Hopkins, The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers Visual Effects: Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, Alex Funke – The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers Make-Up: John Jackson, Beatrice De Alba, Frida Foreign Film: Nowhere in Africa (Caroline Link), Germany Score, Original: Elliot Goldenthal, Frida Original Song: Eminem, Jeff Bass, Luis Resto, ‘Lose Yourself ’, 8 Mile Animated Feature: Spirited Away Short Animated: The ChubbChubbs! Short Live Action: This Charming Man (Der Er En Yndig Mand) Documentary Feature: Bowling For Columbine 136

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Documentary Short: Twin Towers 2003 Picture: The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Director: Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Actor: Sean Penn, Mystic River Actress: Charlize Theron, Monster Supporting Actor:Tim Robbins, Mystic River Supporting Actress: Renée Zellweger, Cold Mountain Original Screenplay: Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation Adapted Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackon, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Cinematography: Russell Boyd, Master and Commander:The Far Side of the World Editing: Jamie Selkirk, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Art Direction: Grant Major, Dan Hennah, Alan Lee, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Costume Design: Ngila Dickson, Richard Taylor, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Sound: Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges, Hammond Peek, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Sound Editing: Richard King, Master and Commander:The Far Side of the World Visual Effects: Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, Alex Funke, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Make-Up: Richard Taylor, Peter King, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Foreign Language Film: The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand), Canada Score, Original: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King Original Song: Fran Walsh, Howard Shore, Annie Lennox, ‘Into the West’, The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King 137

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Animated Feature: Finding Nemo Short Animated: Harvey Krumpet Short Live Action: Two Soldiers Documentary Feature: The Fog of War Documentary Short: Chernobyl Heart

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The Most Shocking Oscar® Oversights

Everyone has a favourite film of the year that is unaccountably snubbed come the nominations announcement. ‘But what about …’ you mutter in disbelief. If you are a seasoned Oscar® observer you should know better, but for the idealistically inclined there remains a persistent sense of injustice that your personal favourite, that you just know is better than the rest has been overlooked. Me, I still can’t come to terms with the annual Jeff Bridges Snub. Perhaps he takes full-page ads in Variety asking not to be considered. It has become something of a truism that the Academy never rewards the true artists, preferring a safe pair of hands – how else to explain Ron Howard’s triumph over David Lynch and Robert Altman in 2001? Alfred Hitchcock’s perennial bridesmaid status is well documented (not least in this book), and it almost goes without saying that such directors of foreign-language classics as Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, and Federico Fellini (briefly Oscar®-friendly) rarely got a look-in.This trend continues today with Martin Scorsese, Lynch,Altman, Spike Lee, Jane Campion, Michael Mann and Ang Lee having produced consistently high quality, interesting, and, in many cases, commercially successful films over the last twenty to thirty years, yet all continue to be passed over (at the time of writing). You could fill another Pocket Essential with a list of 139

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people who should, but never did, win an Oscar®. But what about the films themselves? What follows is a list of some of the choicest morsels, not one of which won a single Oscar®, and most weren’t nominated for any either. If there is a connection between them it is that they were all, to a greater or lesser extent, under-appreciated either critically or commercially on release, and not just by the Academy.All are now acknowledged classics, and have lasted the test of time – and I’d bet will continue to do so – much better than the Best Picture winner of their respective years. Missing from this list is Psycho, which certainly fits the bill, but gets the treatment in an earlier chapter.

Se7en (1995) If there is such a thing as ‘neo-noir’, Se7en is its nastiest, most demented incarnation.The bare bones of the plot are the stuff of a hundred buddy-cop movies. Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is on the eve of retirement from the police department of an unnamed, but very wet, North American city, when he is assigned both a new partner, Mills (Brad Pitt), and a suspicious death. But very early on any resemblance to a routine Movie-of-the-Week scenario is dispelled by the mise-en-scène. In a voice-over the learned Somerset describes his growing hatred of the city and his determination to leave it, abandon it to itself. The crime scene is a derelict tenement as pre-Raphaelite painting, all swollen purple flesh tones and black, black shadows.The death is not merely suspicious, but bizarre – a grossly overweight man who appears to have overeaten to death. The almost palpable unease is heightened by the behaviour of Mills, aggressively determined to impress Somerset, who suspects his younger partner of a propensity for violence that will ultimately undermine him. Amid all 140

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of this is the most unnerving title sequence you’ve ever seen, at once playful and unsettling, accurately setting the tone for the whole movie. If ever there was a year to introduce an Oscar® for Credits, this was it. The grim ambience of Se7en is heightened by Fincher’s decision to shoot much of the film in shadow and near darkness (the rain was a practical decision based on a shooting schedule necessary to accommodate Pitt – it was raining when they started shooting, so it needed to keep raining for a movie that takes place over just a few days). Fincher’s vision is much aided by cinematographer Darius Khondji who gives the movie a painterly air at odds with its sordid subject and urban setting. Between them, director and cinematographer provide a visual guiding intelligence that both serves and enhances Andrew Kevin Walker’s script.With serial-killer movies fashionable in the wake of The Silence Of The Lambs, his screenplay spliced this thriller sub-genre to a horror sensibility, and crafted a narrative of almost mathematical precision that proceeds to a climax both wholly unexpected yet entirely logical.“This isn’t going to end happily,” says Somerset early on to his new partner, and boy, is he not kidding. Along the way, there are explicit classical, literary and, of course, biblical references which both drive the narrative and illuminate the characters – unlike in, say, Shakespeare In Love, where such allusions are gag-fodder. In other words, exactly the sort of screenplay that the Academy normally goes gaga for. Presumably they were scared off by the grungy finished article, although the film was unlucky to be released in the same year as the not entirely dissimilar The Usual Suspects, which did win the Original Screenplay award. And it is perhaps not 100% accurate to say that Se7en won nothing, as Kevin Spacey’s Supporting Actor nod, again for The Usual Suspects, was surely also intended 141

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to acknowledge his outrageous, uncredited turn in Se7en as John Doe. The film was nominated for one Oscar®, for Richard Francis-Bruce’s editing, which is particularly effective during Mills’ disorientating pursuit of Doe through an apartment building and out into the seething street.

Dead Ringers (1988) When Jeremy Irons collected his Best Actor Oscar® for his amusing impersonation of Claus von Bülow in Reversal Of Fortune, one of the people he thanked was David Cronenberg. Cronenberg hadn’t directed the picture (that was Barbet Schroeder). Rather, the Canadian auteur of ‘body horror’ had directed Irons a few years earlier in his follow-up to his mainstream breakthrough, The Fly (1986), and Irons was only acknowledging what many at the Oscar® ceremony already thought; that, once again, the Oscar® was being awarded for an earlier performance. Or, in this instance, performances. For in Dead Ringers, Irons plays twins. Without any obvious make-up or Methodesque twitching, he successfully inhabits two lead roles, both of which are often on screen at the same time, thanks to seamlessly unobtrusive special effects (not the sort to win an Oscar®). Irons had emerged at the beginning of the Eighties with breakthrough roles in Brideshead Revisited (1981) and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), but had struggled to escape the image these roles created of him as the personification of melancholic Englishness. Dead Ringers provided the necessary antidote. It is a measure of the vanity of the top Hollywood actors that everyone who was offered it – and there were many – turned down such terrific parts as Beverly and Elliot Mantle. One would imagine that such an opportunity to 142

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display one’s virtuosity in a double role would have attracted the attention of the biggest stars. Not, it seems, if those roles are of twin gynaecologists whose intense relationship self-destructs when one falls in love with a patient. Cronenberg has spoken wryly of the attitude of the studios to the subject matter, asking why the leads had to be gynaecologists rather than, say, lawyers. Certainly it was a hard film to get made, which he had been trying to do for most of the Eighties, and the absence of a star name attached to the production did not make it any easier. But Irons’ performance, and the film as a whole, is a complete triumph. On screen for virtually the duration of the film, Irons brings a melancholic humour to a project that on paper must have appeared forbidding. The film is certainly challenging, but it would have been downright gruelling were it not for Irons’ skill and Cronenberg’s belief in his lead and the material. When he was overlooked by the Academy in the year when Dustin Hoffman won again for his irritating, self-congratulatory cartoon of autism in Rain Man, he received a number of letters of sympathy and support from colleagues. Chief among these was a note from Paul Newman who, as we have seen, is no stranger to the vagaries of the Academy. Nor was there a nomination for Cronenberg who remains something of an outsider, despite the fact that he has consistently attracted, and drawn great performances from, some of the top names in the business. James Woods, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Jeff Goldblum, Holly Hunter and most recently Ralph Fiennes have all done some of their best work in his films, all of which has been scrupulously ignored by the Academy. Having paraded his personal obsessions and neuroses for nearly thirty years, his reputation has risen, in line with his budgets and the refinement of his technique, to such an extent that he is now 143

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regarded as a genuine visionary – not a state that has ever sat comfortably with Oscar® recognition.

The Shining (1980) Blade Runner (1982) These two milestones in science fiction and horror cinema are bracketed here because they share a common critical response. The overwhelming contemporary reaction to these pictures was one of bafflement that tended to be expressed in aggressively hostile terms. Underpinning much of the flak was an unstated resentment at a promise unfulfilled. The Shining was Kubrick’s first film for five years (then a significant gap; in retrospect, a leisurely weekend off for the late auteur) and he had marshalled an impressive arsenal of elements for his comeback. Jack Nicholson had become increasingly choosy since winning his Oscar® for Cuckoo’s Nest, but had hoped to work with Kubrick for over ten years, when as a relative unknown he had been offered the lead in the permanently postponed Napoleon project. He signed on for what was intended to be a seventeen-week shoot starting in May 1978 but in fact went on for eleven months as the director demanded forty or fifty takes of what appeared to be even the most banal scenes. Coupled with this high-wattage casting was the source material, a supernatural blockbuster by the latest publishing sensation, Stephen King. King wrote the first draft of the screenplay, and remained faithful to his original novel of a troubled family with a telepathic son besieged by terrors as they act as caretakers of the haunted Overlook hotel. Kubrick passed on King’s treatment and began writing it himself with American novelist Diane Johnson. The collective appetite was thus well and truly whetted by the time the film was released in May 1980, with secrecy maintained to 144

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such an extent that the Warner’s management did not see the film until the week before release. And what did they see? Far from King’s breathless ghostinfested romp, which includes all manner of supernatural manifestations, Kubrick’s The Shining is a two-hour-long portrait of a man going mad, a sort of mid-life crisis Repulsion (1965). It is as much a meditation on horror as it is a horror film.The audience is refused cathartic climax as one slow-moving scene of the camera prowling the Overlook’s brightly-lit corridors gives way to … another slow-moving scene of much the same thing. The overall effect on the sympathetic viewer is of mounting dread, unpunctuated by the traditional trappings of the genre. When these do appear at the film’s climax – a party guest with his head cleaved open, a room full of cobwebbed skeletons (which only appeared in the American version) – the effect is perhaps deliberately hoaky, as if the director is pointing out the contrast between his vision and King’s. The critics instead could not look beyond the fact that Kubrick had taken the title and basic plot of the book, and junked just about everything else. Far from the promised fright-fest, boredom was the most frequent response.What had until now been praised as Kubrick’s auteurist temperament began to be criticised as self-indulgent controlfreakery, with the technical perfection of the film, including the ground-breaking use of the Steadicam, evidence to some of his attitude to the medium as that of a mechanical puzzle to be solved, rather than an art form. This supposed infatuation with the technological tools of telling the story, rather than the story itself, was the criticism also most often levelled at Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Again, anticipation was high, as Scott was coming off the back of a huge science-fiction hit with Alien (1979), and his leading man, Harrison Ford, had begun to establish 145

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his credentials as both Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Blade Runner was an expensive picture and, unlike The Shining, there had been a fair amount of pre-release publicity centred on the astonishing visuals and special effects. The shoot had been a tense one, with Scott falling out with his crew and lead actor, who remains uncomfortable talking about the film to this day, and as it neared release its testscreenings were not a success. The summer of 1982, it transpired, was not the time for a dystopian vision of the near future, both critics and audiences much preferring E.T.’s promise of a happier ending. Blade Runner had its own variation on the happy ending theme; a final couple of minutes of film tacked on – together with the unhelpful voice-over resentfully spoken by Ford – after Scott had been formally sacked from the picture and locked out of the editing room. This banal finale was mostly made up of unused second-unit footage from … The Shining. While it is certainly true that both The Shining and Blade Runner are infatuated with the tools of their own making, to suggest that this is all both have to offer shows a depressing narrow-mindedness to the possibilities of cinema. As already noted, the very early Eighties were a very strong time for American cinema and there is little in the Academy’s history to suggest that it would prefer either of these films to the more conventional prestige pictures. But the dismissive treatment both received is a scandal. The Shining did not receive a single nomination in even the technical categories, Blade Runner only two, for art direction & set decoration and visual effects, neither of which it won. Blade Runner’s treatment is symptomatic of the literalmindedness of the Academy. They like special effects to look like special effects, not to be integrated into the picture; they would rather reward design that re-creates a 146

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recognisable historical period than that which successfully realises a world as yet unseen. (The most extreme example of this failure of imagination on the Academy’s part is the tendency to award the make-up Oscar® to a movie that foregrounds the use of a lot of make-up, such as Mrs Doubtfire or Topsy-Turvy.) Ridley Scott would receive best director nominations for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, and his recent career upswing suggests that his name may yet be inside the golden envelope one day. But it is too late for Kubrick. He now sits alongside Hitchcock as the Englishlanguage film-maker most pointedly ignored by the Academy. His remaining films after The Shining, Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) won only one nomination between them, that of adapted screenplay for Jacket. While the Academy’s indifference to his Vietnam picture can be understood partially as a matter of timing, having over-honoured Oliver Stone’s Platoon the year before, their resistance to the admittedly poorly-received Eyes Wide Shut is harder to explain, if only for sentimental reasons. Never normally slow in acknowledging past mistakes, there was no posthumous honorary Oscar® for Kubrick, even though most of Hollywood would have queued up to work with him. Even so, Kubrick’s influence hovered over the 1999 Academy Awards®, where a film about a young boy who is terrified by visions of death and murder featured prominently in the nominations. Like The Shining, The Sixth Sense went home empty-handed. Whether its standing will grow over twenty years as The Shining’s has remains to be seen.

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Manhattan (1979) The opening of Manhattan must be one of the most famous in modern cinema.A disembodied voice on the soundtrack reads aloud from a variety of possible openings from a novel (the themes of which will develop during the movie). George Gershwin’s thrilling ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ plays over a succession of iconic New York images such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the Staten Island ferry and a snow-dusted Central Park, brilliantly choreographed so that as the music climaxes, fireworks explode over the New York skyline. All shot in ravishing Cinemascope black and white. Manhattan is one of Woody Allen’s best pictures – which is saying something about a thirty-film career of such consistency – although the anecdote about him asking United Artists not to release it, so disappointed was he with the finished article, is apparently true. Beautifully played, emotionally and intellectually satisfying and laugh-outloud funny, it is the crowning achievement of Allen’s development from stand-up comic with a camera, those ‘early, funny films’, to genuine auteur. But it is that black and white photography we remember most about Manhattan. It was Allen’s second film with cinematographer Gordon Willis, after his multi-Oscar® winning Annie Hall. The two had spoken about the challenge of shooting an intimate comedy drama using anamorphic widescreen and black and white, redolent of the Fellini movies so beloved by Allen, in order to look at New York afresh. Willis was the finest cinematographer of his generation, having photographed both of the Godfather pictures in muted, autumnal browns and blacks, a style that holds together movies that take place in different times and across different continents.Willis and Coppola fought regularly (which did not stop them collaborating again on The 148

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Godfather, Part III) and, while there is no record of serious disagreement with Allen, it seems that Willis can be a volatile colleague and not one to curry favour. Willis certainly must have done something to upset someone (everyone?). Despite his long-standing associations with Allen, Coppola and, especially, the late Alan J Pakula – from The Parallax View (1974) right up to The Devil’s Own (1997) – Willis has never won an Oscar® and, just as incredibly, has been nominated only twice (for Allen’s Zelig, 1983, and The Godfather, Part III).Think of the gloomy clandestine meetings with ‘Deep Throat’ in All The President’s Men (1976), the wintry death of Fredo Corleone on Lake Tahoe in The Godfather, Part II, Allen and Diane Keaton on the dunes in Annie Hall. All shot by Willis, and not even nominated by the Academy. Most of all think of Allen and Keaton again, sitting on a park bench at daybreak beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan, the work of a craftsman at the peak of his abilities. Manhattan was nominated for just two Academy Awards® in 1979, Original Screenplay and Supporting Actress (Mariel Hemingway) and won neither, although Meryl Streep, who appears briefly and brilliantly in the film as Allen’s lesbian ex-wife did win the Supporting Actress award, ostensibly for Kramer vs. Kramer. Willis was given a Lifetime Achievement award by the American Society of Cinematographers in 1995. An honorary statuette from the Academy is surely long overdue.

The Searchers (1956) It is one of the most resonant images in film.The opening and final moments of The Searchers are almost exactly the same, the brilliant sunlight of the western wilderness streaming into an open doorway, framing the silhouetted 149

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figures of, at the beginning, Martha Edwards and, at the close, her brother-in-law Ethan, masterfully played by John Wayne. Between them, Edwards will spend five years searching for his niece, Lucy, fuelled by hatred for the Indians who abducted her and murdered her family. It has already been noted that John Ford, the architect of the cinematic representation of the American west, won none of his four Oscars® for Westerns. His was a career that covered a wide range of genres, including a conspicuous interest in social issues in America, but it is the Western with which he is most closely identified, and with good reason. His collaborations with John Wayne – spanning an entire generation of cinema from Stagecoach in 1939 to Donovan’s Reef in 1963 – in large part define what we think of as the Western, whether that be myth or reality (whatever that is). He himself refused any particular claims that people made for his work, often to the point of wilful negation of even his most self-evident talents, as the auteurist movement singled him out for attention. His work still divides critics, from those who regard him as the epitome of the Classical Hollywood director, to others such as David Thomson who feels that “no one has done so much to invalidate the Western as a form”. But even Thomson singles out The Searchers for praise. It is a film that, if not unique amongst Ford’s work, is unusual insofar as the psychological motivations of his characters are very much to the fore.Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is motivated by hate for his niece’s captors, and Ford’s use of expressionist lighting and set design underlines this at every turn. This was a different Wayne from what audiences had seen before. Rather than the laconic, tough, but ultimately reliable and even kindly authority figure, Edwards is a bigot and a racist who is driven by a desire to track down and murder his niece who, he fears correctly, has been raised to 150

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be a squaw by the Indians who abducted her. Never have Wayne’s lizard-lidded, dead eyes been used to such telling effect in what was probably his best performance. In a pretty poor year for American film, The Searchers was not nominated for a single Oscar®. Ford would never again be nominated, even though he and Wayne had at least one other classic in them, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), another atypical venture insofar as it attempted to demythologise a West that both had spent much of their careers creating.This is the movie that contains the memorable phrase “When the fact becomes the legend, print the legend,” an epigram that for some encapsulates Ford’s largely romantic view of heroism in the West.Wayne would eventually win his Oscar® for True Grit (1969), an endearing, self-mocking performance that nonetheless pales beside his Ethan Edwards, the perennial outsider.

Singin’ In The Rain (1952) The winner of the Best Picture Oscar®, and a whole lot more, in 1951 was An American In Paris, precisely the sort of ambitious, colourful musical that MGM built their reputation on. Its star and choreographer Gene Kelly picked up an honorary award that year to acknowledge his versatility and his contribution to the cinema, which he entered on the back of a successful career as a dance teacher.The film was both extremely successful and critically acclaimed.The following year Singin’ In The Rain was released to relative indifference from public and critics alike and was nominated for only two Oscars® – Supporting Actress for Jean Hagen and Musical Score for Lennie Hayton – neither of which it won. Half a century later, half of cinema itself later, Singin’ In The Rain is rightly regarded as a true treasure while its 151

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predecessor is, if hardly forgotten, at least placed in its proper historical perspective. Apparently something of a mess during actual production (it was conceived as an excuse to showcase the Twenties songs of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed), you would never know it from the finished article, which virtually hums with an unforced optimism that must have marked it out even in 1952. Quite why this second collaboration between Kelly and Stanley Donen (who co-directed On The Town in 1949) should have been so little regarded, relatively speaking, by the paying public at the time is hard to understand. Did every musical in the early Fifties feature such great songs as ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’,‘Good Morning’ and, of course, the title song itself? Was every movie blessed, and I think ‘blessed’ is right, with such unfettered joie de vivre that punters felt they could give this one a miss? What is even more staggering is how even the Academy could have overlooked it. Aside from its, now, obvious charms – the songs, the casting (Kelly, his self-satisfaction in check; Donald O’Connor, hilarious; the young Debbie Reynolds, never more cheery), the, well, singin’ in the rain – it’s a movie about the movies. The Academy has never been slow to acknowledge films that foreground show business, even relatively mediocre pictures. Indeed, the 1952 Best Picture Oscar® actually went to one, DeMille’s circus soap opera The Greatest Show On Earth. A couple of years earlier All About Eve had won several awards, including the top honour, and that same year (1950), Billy Wilder’s acerbic Sunset Boulevard had been in the running too. Hollywood, it often appears, likes nothing better than movies about itself, even when they are less than complimentary. How else to explain the defiantly East Coast mentality of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, whose scenes of unambiguous vitriol aimed at the LA lifestyle did not stop 152

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many residents making it the Best Picture of 1977? Of all the films featured in this section, it may be that the contemporary response to Singin’ In The Rain is hardest to understand. A number of the films listed above deal with grim subject matter, and some do so in a way that is, if not experimental, then at least unconventional. But aside from Kelly’s then-obligatory vaguely pretentious Dance As Art sequence ‘Broadway Melody’, Singin’ In The Rain is as straightforwardly enjoyable as they come. More than that, in fact, it is a byword for cineaste happiness.

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Reference Materials

The following books were all well thumbed as Oscar® reference sources in the writing of this volume: The Academy Awards® Handbook by John Harkness, New York: Pinnacle Books, 2000. A year-by-year account of the Oscars®. Harkness includes all nominations for all the Acting, Directing and Best Picture categories, and writes knowledgeably about each year’s awards. If you enjoyed this book, you’ll find much to enjoy here. Alternate Oscars® by Danny Peary, London: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Peary discusses the Best Picture, Actor and Actress winners every year up to 1991 and calls it as he sees it, offering alternatives where he sees fit (which is more often than not). An excellent work of popular reference, Peary clearly knows his stuff and isn’t afraid to go for both the obvious (Citizen Kane for Best Picture in 1941) or the eccentric (err,Wesley Snipes as Best Actor in 1991 (for New Jack City)). And The Winner Is … by Emanuel Levy, New York: Continuum, 1991. Subtitled ‘The History And Politics Of The Oscar® Awards’, this history of the Oscars®, given slightly spurious academic credibility by an emphasis on statistical research and lashings of percentages, is tough 154

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going. But it is without question formidably researched and tells you everything you are ever likely to need to know about the Academy’s voting structure, membership and the like. The Envelope, Please by Arnold Wayne Jones, New York: Avon Books, 1999. Organised by decades like this book, Jones favours trivia questions and anecdote over comment and comprehensiveness. No use if you want to know who won the technical awards, lots of fun if you want to know which Oscar® nominee’s wife once lost a senate race to Richard Nixon (Melvyn Douglas, as it happens). The following were used for background on particular periods and films and are recommended: BFI Film and Modern Classics, London: BFI Publishing, 1992 – present. Two series of books that discuss individual films, usually in their historical, industrial and aesthetic contexts. Approach varies dramatically depending on the style of the author, who may be an academic, journalist or novelist (Salman Rushdie, for example, discusses the effect of The Wizard Of Oz on his development as a writer), but the quality is usually high. The following are particularly recommended: Edward Buscombe, Unforgiven (2004), Richard Dyer, Se7en (1999); Mark Kermode, The Exorcist (1998); Laura Mulvey, Citizen Kane (1992). The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon, London: Picador, 1992. The gestation, filming and reception of De Palma’s disastrous The Bonfire Of The Vanities. Kinder to the director – who allowed Salamon access to all aspects of the production – than the finished article should really allow, this is otherwise a fairly sober (compared to Fleming and Biskind, 155

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anyway) account of a catalogue of very, very bad decisions. You couldn’t make it up. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind, London: Bloomsbury, 1998. This account of the Seventies New Hollywood has been rather overpraised since publication, but it remains a thunderingly good read and a cannily constructed one too. Fairly detailed observations on the industry by this highly experienced film journalist are leavened by lots of sex and drugs. If the book has one particular achievement, it is to make the case for Hal Ashby, a talented editor and, briefly, A-list director (Coming Home, Being There).The sequel, Down and Dirty Pictures (London: Bloomsbury, 2004) purports to be an account of the rise and influence of the American independent film in the 1990s, but it reads as little more than an extended settling of scores with Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein and Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. Tellingly, it has virtually nothing of substance to say about a single one of the numerous films listed. Film Noir, by Paul Duncan, London: Pocket Essentials, 2000. Highly informative account of the development of Noir and an analysis of key films from the movement such as Double Indemnity and Touch Of Evil (1958). In the same series as this volume, so you know you’ll get your money’s worth. High Concept by Charles Fleming, London: Bloomsbury, 1998. Uses the career of Don Simpson to examine the rise of the ‘high concept’ movie and, as such, makes a good companion volume to Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, although a less ambitious undertaking. Again, no shortage of fornication and pharmaceuticals. 156

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The Hollywood Story by Joel Finler, London: Wallflower, 2004 (revised edition). Finler’s exhaustive account of the rise of the Big Five (plus RKO and Disney) is a truly magisterial tome (the first edition won the short-lived BFI Best Book Award in 1989). Everything all but the most scholarly of enthusiasts could wish for is recorded between the covers, although the coverage of the post Studio System era (late 1960s onwards) is understandably less extensive. Movie Wars by Jonathan Rosenbaum, London: Wallflower, 2002.The book that Down and Dirty Pictures wishes it was, half of Movie Wars is a passionate and convincing repudiation of the PR myth that Miramax is the friend of the independent film-maker – film criticism for the No Logo generation. The rest of the book is part travelogue of film festivals, part hymn to Orson Welles (Rosenbaum was instrumental in the restoration of Touch of Evil), which is rather more self-indulgent but still a pleasure to read. When The Lights Go Down by Pauline Kael, London: Marion Boyars, 1975. Collection of the influential New Yorker critic’s writings on Seventies cinema. Kael, who died in 2001, was an enthusiastic supporter of many of the Seventies Movie Brats and a personal friend of Warren Beatty after she championed Bonnie And Clyde. Her reviews are highly impressionistic and from the gut and she writes wonderfully. Not all film-makers were as appreciative as Warren. After describing Kevin Costner as having ‘feathers in his hair and feathers in his head’ in Dances With Wolves (one of her last reviews before retirement), he called her “a c***”. Touché, Kev. And finally, an honourable mention to: 157

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http://www.oscars.org is the parent Website of AMPAS® and includes useful and interesting pages on the history of the Academy.You can also use the easy to navigate database – www.oscars.org/awards_db/index.html – to check out every single Oscar®-nominated performer, artist or technician. The subsidiary www.oscars.com concentrates on the most recent awards ceremony, where you can read and hear what some of the winners had to say, and check out who was wearing what on the big night.

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Alfred Hitchcock NE Paul Duncan 4.99 Ang Lee Ellen Cheshire 3.99 Animation Mark Whitehead 4.99 Audrey Hepburn Ellen Cheshire 3.99 Billy Wilder Glenn Hopp 3.99 Blaxploitation Films Mikel J Koven 3.99 Bollywood Ashok Banker 3.99 Brian de Palma John Ashbrook 3.99 Bruce Lee Simon B Kenny 3.99 Carry On Films Mark Campbell 3.99 Clint Eastwood Michael Carlson 3.99 Coen Brothers Cheshire/Ashbrook 3.99 David Cronenberg John Costello 3.99 David Lynch Le Blanc/Odell 3.99 Doctor Who Mark Campbell 3.99 Film Music Paul Tonks 3.99 Film Noir Paul Duncan 3.99 Film Studies Andrew M Butler 3.99 Filming on a Microbudget NE Paul Hardy 4.99 French New Wave Chris Wiegand 3.99 George Lucas James Clarke 3.99 German Expressionist Films Paul Cooke 3.99 Hal Hartley Jason Wood 3.99 Hammer Films John McCarty 3.99 Horror Films Le Blanc/Odell 3.99 Jackie Chan Le Blanc/Odell 3.99 James Cameron Brian J Robb 3.99 Jane Campion Ellen Cheshire 3.99 John Carpenter Le Blanc/Odell 3.99 Krzystzof Kieslowski Monika Maurer 3.99 Laurel & Hardy Brian J Robb 3.99 Martin Scorsese Paul Duncan 4.99 The Marx Brothers Mark Bego 3.99 Michael Mann Mark Steensland 3.99 Mike Hodges Mark Adams 3.99 Oliver Stone Michael Carlson 3.99 Orson Welles Martin Fitzgerald 3.99 Quentin Tarantino £4.99 Ridley Scott Brian Robb 3.99 Roger Corman Mark Whitehead 3.99 Roman Polanski Daniel Bird 3.99 Science Fiction Films 4.99 Sergio Leone Michael Carlson 3.99 Slasher Movies Mark Whitehead 3.99 Spike Lee Darren Arnold 3.99 Stanley Kubrick Paul Duncan 3.99 Steven Soderbergh Jason Wood 3.99 Steven Spielberg 4.99 Terry Gilliam John Ashbrook 3.99 Tim Burton Le Blanc/Odell 4.99 Vampire Films Le Blanc/Odell 3.99 Vietnam War Movies Jamie Russell 3.99 Woody Allen Martin Fitzgerald 3.99 Writing a Screenplay John Costello 3.99

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