Ben Woulds on the 10 Best Picture nominees

In the avalanche of stunning events last week — both good and very bad — a couple of guest essays got elbowed out of the way for more urgent breaking news. We’ll kick off the pre-holiday relaxation this morning by kicking back and catching up with tjose two AD reader submissions. You’ll remember Ben Would’s Oscar Ranking project in March, evaluating every one of the Best Picture nominees in Oscar history — of which he’s amazingly seen all but two. Ben is back with his thoughts about the expansion of the Best Picture race to 10 nominees.

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10 Best Picture nominees
by Ben Woulds

Doubling the number of Best Picture nominees is just the latest in a pathetic series of attempts by the Academy to stay relevant, which they are not. Yes, Slumdog Millionaire got a big box office boost after the Oscars, but it was for one week only, and it was already riding a tidal wave of good word of mouth. The Oscar did little for No Country for Old Men, The Departed and Crash. The backlash against that latter prize was so great since the outcry was universal that Brokeback Mountain was robbed, some have reported that Brokeback might have done even better post-Oscars (and Brokeback got a greater percentage boost from the Golden Globes than Crash at the Oscars).

No doubt producers and studios will be happy to report that their movies are Best Picture nominees even though they shouldn’t be, but the luster of that coronation will be diminished as even worse films are added to the already not-so-illustrious list of recent years (inferior work like Chocolat, Seabiscuit, Finding Neverland, Crash, Juno and Benjamin Button, to name just a few). Also, they are keeping five director nominees, so the Best Picture winner will almost definitely be one of those with a corresponding directing nomination.

Only once since 1932 has the Picture winner not had at least a director nomination (when they embarrassed themselves in 1989 by giving it to Driving Miss Daisy, failing to even nominate Do the Right Thing and about half dozen other superior films). As you know, picture and director should match since film is a director’s medium, and in virtually all cases when they don’t match, they get director right and picture wrong, e.g., some director winners that lost Picture include Brokeback (losing to Crash), The Pianist (losing to Chicago), Traffic (losing to Gladiator), Saving Private Ryan (losing to Shakespeare in Love), Reds (losing to Chariots of Fire), etc., going back to the old days when superior director winners like A Place in the Sun, The Quiet Man, Giant and The Graduate lost to An American in Paris, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days and In the Heat of the Night, respectively (the middle two films are out-and-out bad). The one noteable exception is when Cabaret won Director (and 7 other prizes) but lost Picture to Godfather. Personally, I would have voted for Cabaret, but I confess I’m in the distinct minority, and this rant is not meant to be about my personal opinions, its meant to be about “consensus” opinion thru the years.

Academy President Sid Ganis proudly boasted that by nominating 10 films they will preserve more classics, siting 1939. But 1939 was a hard year to get wrong there was such an abundance of greatness. And, in a way they did get it wrong, because even though The Wizard of Oz made final 10, it did not make the final 5 in that it was not nominated for either Best Director or Best Screenplay (and no acting nominations), which meant it was not a true contender, as opposed to Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which did have director and screenplay nominations. Yes, they are wonderful films, but c’mon, The Wizard of Oz! Chips isn’t in the same league. But Ganis is is no fool (just disingenuous), he should have picked other years in which Picture nominations went to forgotten clunkers like Five Star Final, The Smiling Lieutenant, State Fair, Smilin’ Through, Flirtation Walk, Here Comes the Navy, Three Smart Girls, 100 Men and a Girl, Four Daughters, Blossoms in teh Dust, One Foot in Heaven, The Pied Piper, The Human Comedy, etc. And films like Cavalcade, Great Ziegfield and You Can’t Take It With You would be equally relegated the dust heap had they not won (don’t get me wrong, most of these are good films, but not Best Pictures).

The Academy has been justly criticized not only for usually getting Best Picture wrong, but for often not even nominating the year’s true best. Slumdog is a very good energetic film, but Wall-e is for the ages, and more critically acclaimed even now. And the Academy probably also realizes that had they nominated Dark Knight, more people would have watched the telecast, which is what this increase to 10 is all about, an attempt to boost sagging ratings (though they did do better than in the past 5 years, I am confident thanks to the Heath Ledger nomination and cynically but wisely using lesser but hipper stars as presenters, e.g., Zac Efron & Robert Pattinson to attract the teeny bopper crowd). So, the thinking likely goes, nominate ten, that way more people will watch to see if their favorite movie will win. And that way they are more likely to nominate the true best pictures, rather than omitting great work like Breaking the Waves, Fight Club, Almost Famous, Memento, Mulholland Drive, Eternal Sunshine, History of Violence, Children of Men, United 93, Wall-e, and others. However, historically that just doesn’t work out for them. Here is what happened during the years in which they nominated more than 5 films:

1931: 5 nominees but the year’s masterpiece City Lights wasn’t nominated while ** Cimarron won, leading to a dozen nominees in 1932.

1932: Grand Hotel wins without even a director nomination because its big at the box office. Non-nominees Trouble in Paradise, Love Me Tonight and Scarface are all considered finer films, then and even more now.

1933: Creaky Cavalcade wins. Classics King Kong and Duck Soup receive zero nominations between them. Even more Academy-friendly Dinner at Eight is ignored.

1934: It Happened One Night. Not my personal favorite, but I admit that in a historical context, this time the Academy gets it right. However, there are strong arguments for losers The Thin Man and Imitation of Life,
as well as non-nominees Twentieth Century and Of Human Bondage.

1935: Masterpiece The Informer wins Director (John Ford), Screenplay, Actor and Score. It then loses Picture to vastly inferior box office champ Mutiny on the Bounty. Makes no sense, though they did it again in recent years, giving Director & Screenplay prizes to Traffic, The Pianist and Brokeback, only to give the top award to some of the worst films that have ever won: Gladiator, Chicago and Crash. Also, in 1935, Top Hat and David Copperfield lose, while The 39 Steps, A Night at the Opera and Bride of Frankenstein aren’t even nominated.

1936: Bloated The Great Ziegfield beats Dodsworth and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, among the other nominees almost all of which were superior. However, the two best films of the year aren’t nominated, Modern Times and Fury. Swing Time too.

1937: The Life of Emile Zola undeservedly beats The Good Earth, The Awful Truth, and non-nominee, true best Make Way for Tomorrow. In fact, when Leo McCarey accepted best director for Awful Truth, he said “thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong movie”, meaning Make Way for Tomorrow. If you’ve never seen it, its incredible, a mega-tear jerker.

1938: You Can’t Take It With You over non-nominees Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bringing Up Baby, plus nominees Adventures of Robin Hood, The Citadel and Pygmalion. You’ll notice I don’t mention foreign-language films in my rant because the Academy has had a pathetic history of honoring foreign films, nominating 8 in 81 years. If the Academy truly knew anything about world cinema the way it pretends too, at least half the winners would be foreign. However, they are xenophobic, fine, I almost don’t blame them since at heart its no longer about the art, its about the tv show, about commerce, and they want people to watch. However, in 1938, they actually had the good sense to nominate Grand Illusion, arguably the greatest film ever made. Goebbels and Hitler banned it in Germany, FDR singled it out, and Orson Welles said its the one film he’d save if he could only save one. So the Academy actually nominates it – the one foreign film nominated in their first 40 years – and it proceeds to lose to a *** film. I mention this because it was clearly on their radar, they blew it big time.

1939: Already discussed, nothing could beat Gone with the Wind (though Wuthering Heights won the New York Film Crix award as a compromise when they couldn’t agree on GWTW or Mr. Smith).

1940: Rebecca is a wonderful film, but it ain’t The Grapes of Wrath. Philadelphia Story is also better remembered and lost, while they failed to nominate Fantasia and His Girl Friday.

1941: How Green Was My Valley infamously beats Citizen Kane (and Maltese Falcon). With 10 nominees, you’d think they could have found a spot for The Lady Eve, but they always blew it with Preston Sturges.

1942: The moving but propoganda-ist (word?) Mrs. Miniver just doesn’t hold up as well as fellow nominees The Magnificent Ambersons and Yankee Doodle Dandy, while non-nominees Sullivan’s Travels, To Be or Not To Be and Now, Voyager are all better remembered.

1943: Its hard to argue with Casablanca. All I’ll say is that Casablanca was a 1942 release, and had it been slated against the extremely popular Mrs. Miniver, it might have lost (Casablanca was actually an upset winner over favorite Song of Bernadette, the only upset I can think of where the surprise winner was the right winner). And why wasn’t Shadow of a Doubt not nominated? Because they almost always blew it with Hitchcock, not nominating the likes of Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, etc.

1944: They switched over to 5 movies.

So, 13 years of between 8 and 12 nominees, they went 3 for 13. Not to good. But in the last 13 years, they’ve gone 0 for 13 (yes, even Return of the King should not have won, City of God should have won…yes I said I generally forgive the Academy for keeping foreign-language films out of the mix, but when they recognize it for director & screenplay (plus cinematography & editing), clearly its on the radar, they’ve seen it, and therefore should be considered. And Return is the weakest film of the trilogy, they goofed big time by denying Fellowship to the tepid Beautiful Mind). Think they’ll do any better with 10 nominees? I doubt it. But I don’t care either, I haven’t watched for the last 3 years, and don’t intend to watch again.