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2008 |
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OSCAR'S LEGION OF THE NEGLECTED |
 If Alfred Hitchcock looks a bit miffed, even in his throne as Hollywood's master of suspense, it may be because he never won an Oscar as best director. |
Talk about oversights!
Oscar ignored many classics
of TheColumnists.com
Quiz time, movie
buffs.
How many times did Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense,
get the Academy Award for best director? Five? Three? One?
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. The answer is--none.
The British director never got an Oscar for any of the movies
that carved his name in cinema immortality--classics like "The
39 Steps" (1935), "The Lady Vanishes" (1938),
"Vertigo" (1958) and "Psycho" (1960).
The career-long slight puts him in solid company. If you spliced
the film of all the outstanding movies that the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences failed to recognize, it probably would
circle Hollywood.
I would argue that the passed-over pictures are more impressive
than the Oscar winners themselves. You can see this clearly by
taking a backward look. While many Oscar-winning pictures have
faded into celluloid oblivion, a host of non-Oscar movies have
stood the test of time and emerged as classics.
The most obvious picture to make the point is "Citizen Kane"
(1941), a watershed movie that appears at the top, or near the
top, of every critic's all-time-best list. The picture, which
pioneered film techniques still being used, depicted the stormy
life of a newspaper tycoon played by Orson Welles.
Hollywood insiders feel that "Kane" lost in the balloting
to "How Green Was My Valley," in part, because Welles--the
picture's director, producer and star--was simply not one of
Hollywood's own. He was a temperamental Johnny-come-lately. Many
believe that Academy members wanted to teach the 25-year-old
East Coast wunderkind some humility.
Also playing a role in Oscar selections, according to Time
magazine, are political pressures, resistance to innovation,
and the fact that the Academy's 5,800 members who pick the winners
are part of the movie business. In the current issue, film writer
Richard Corliss, points out that many Academy voters have ties
to the nominees. "(They) may be their friends or their enemies
or their potential employers."
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941),
an overlooked gem, confronted yet another problem. John Huston,
its director and son of character actor Walter Huston, was part
of the Hollywood Establishment. But the Academy passed over his
picture because it always turns up its nose at detective films.
Yet, through the years, the movie has become the quintessential
private eye film and evolved into a cult classic. Humphrey Bogart's
tough-guy dialogue still delights moviegoers. "When you're
slapped," Bogie tells saucer-eyed Peter Lorre, "you'll
take it and like it." To the double-crossing Mary Astor,
whom Bogie turns in to the cops,
he says: "If you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years.
And I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember
you."
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"2001--A Space Odyssey" was not even nominated for Best Picture. |
"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), Stanley Kubrick's milestone work about man's quest for life in the universe, was nominated for best picture. But it lost to "Oliver," a lesser film by a quantum leap.
That was the fate, too, of "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964), Kubrick's black comedy about a misdirected nuclear attack. The film, whose message is even more relevant today, bowed to "My Fair Lady," a bright musical but not in the class of "Strangelove."
"High Noon" (1952), the classic western that starred Gary Cooper as an abandoned sheriff who must take on four outlaws, was an also-ran. Instead, Cecil B. DeMille's all-but-forgotten "The Greatest Show on Earth" won 1952 best-picture accolades.
Humor is another subject the academy usually pooh-poohs. And so it is not totally unexpected that the movies' greatest comedian, Charlie Chaplin, did not get an Oscar for any of his pictures, including "City Lights"--his best work and the one with the most poignant ending.
In the 1931 silent film, a lovely blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) discovers it is the little tramp (Chaplin) who has paid for her successful eye operation. "You," the titles say as she sees for the first time the man she has imagined to be her Prince Charming.
"You can see now?" the tramp asks. "Yes," the girl replies uncertainly. "I can see now."
Until this moment, it has never occurred to the tramp that he is inadequate. Now, instead of taking her in his arms, he can only return a shy, embarrassed smile. The close-up of Chaplin's face in the fadeout is unforgettable, a blend of joy and sorrow
and shame.
(Chaplin was awarded a special Oscar in the first year of the awards for "versatility and genius in writing, acting, directing and producing 'The Circus'"(1928), but lost out in direct competition for the Best Comedy Direction Oscar that year to Lewis Milestone and his "Two Arabian Knights," a film totally forgotten today. At the 1971 Oscar ceremony, Chaplin, then 83, received a lifetime achievement Oscar for his indelible influence on film history. Then, in 1972, his score for the 1952 film "Limelight" amazingly won the Oscar for dramatic score--20 years after its initial release--because it had never been shown commercially in Los Angeles until that year, thereby qualifying for Oscar competition against contemporary films.)
The academy also passed over every effort of the irrepressible Marx Brothers. Their irreverent slapstick comedies such as "A Night at the Opera" (1935) and "A Day at the Races" (1937) still tickle the nation's funny bone. Remember Groucho's leering smile, painted-on moustache and rapid-fire one-liners?
In the celebrated cabin scene of "A Night at the Opera," Groucho is squeezed into a telephone booth-size stateroom crammed with 20 other people. A woman knocks and asks if her Aunt Minnie is inside. "If she isn't," Groucho tells her, "you can probably find somebody just as good. " When a cleaning woman shoehorns into the crush, Groucho cracks,"You'll have to start on the ceiling. It's the only place that isn't
being occupied. "
There was "Dinner at Eight" (1933), the best of MGM's all-star comedy-dramas. Fixed in memory is Marie Dressler's incisive remark as she strolls into a formal dinner with Jean Harlow. "I was reading a book the other day," says Harlow, the platinum-blonde sex goddess of her day. "Do you know the guy said machinery is going to take the place of every profession? "
"Oh, my dear," bellows grande dame Dressler. She arches her brows as she gives Harlow's svelte form the once-over. "That's something you'll never have to worry about."
If comedies were seldom acknowledged, neither were horror movies. And so such film immortals as "Frankenstein" (1931), "Dracula" (1931), and "King Kong" (1933) never got to the starting post in the Oscar derby. Yet, who can forget Bela Lugosi as the prince of the undead? "I am Dracula," the dark-caped figure says in East European tones as he greets a visitor to his musty castle. "I bid you . . . welcome."
The black hair is combed straight back, the flesh is like alabaster and the lips are as livid as if cold blood flowed through them. Holding a candle, the count leads the way through massive cobwebs. But when he passes, the webs remain unbroken. Inside a richly appointed medieval guest room, a huge fire burns and a sumptuous meal is spread out. Dracula opens a dusty bottle. "This is very old wine," he says, pouring it into a polished glass. Ah, but aren't you drinking, too? he is asked. There is a silence. "I never drink (pause) w-i-i-i-n-e."
As for musicals, there is at least one glaring omission. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952), perhaps the greatest of its genre, failed to get even a nomination. The Hollywood spoof is today, more than a half-century after it was made, just as good as it was when it opened, and Gene Kelly gives the performance of a lifetime.
Thrillers are another category not taken seriously. The biggest gaffe here was Carol Reed's "The Third Man" (1950), a spellbinder with a haunting zither score and an unforgettable scene with Orson Welles opposite Joseph Cotten in a ferris wheel circling high above war-torn Vienna. Welles plays a black-market profiteer who sells watered-down penicillin that has killed scores of patients. Here's how he tries to justify his racket in his ferris wheel chat with Cotten:
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. And what did that produce: The cuckoo clock."
Disgraceful is the only word for the academy's selection of foreign films. Heading the list of movies that failed to get Oscars is "Rules of the Game. " Jean Renoir's1939 masterpiece, which contrasted manners and morals among French aristocrats and their servants. It stands at the top of many all-time best-ever lists.
Equally puzzling are omissions of "Breathless" (1960), Jean-Luc Godard's key New Wave film, and Francois Truffaut's "Jules and Jim" (1961), a ground-breaking movie about two men who share a home with a woman they both love.
Also not getting recognition were such memorable films as "Brief Encounter" (1945), "Open City" (1947), "Wild Strawberries" (1957), "The 400 Blows" (1959) and "Belle de Jour" (1967).
If you still aren't convinced that the academy has made some colossal bloopers, consider these movies that failed to get a best picture Oscar-or even a best picture nomination--but were really superb in their day, and, like good wine, got better as they aged: "Gunga Din" (1939), "The Mortal Storm" (1940), "Pride and Prejudice" (1940), "Laura" (1944), "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946), and "The African Queen" (1951).
Also "Paths of Glory" (1957), "Some Like It Hot (1959), "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "Easy Rider" (1969), "Carnal Knowledge" (1971), and "Last Tango in Paris" (1973).
'Nuff said.
©2008 by David Zinman. This column first posted Feb. 18, 2008.
David Zinman is the
author of "50 Classic Motion Pictures" and "Saturday
Afternoon at the Bijou."
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