Well a ritual is upon the film going world and everyone within ear shot is hearing a load of Oscar predictions and speculations. People are arguing for what should win, what probably will win, and what should have been nominated, etc. I’m no stranger to this phenomenon as my long term readers will recall last years pre and post Oscar posts. A year later and I’m even more informed on this year’s crop, seeing every film nominated in the four major categories and with a few opinions on each of them.
However before we get cracking on yet another solitary man voicing his (occasionally) informed opinion on the upcoming fest, lets take a trip back, way back to a decade when the Oscars weren’t even called the Oscars yet. According to anecdotal film history Bette Davis claimed to name the Academy Awards by saying that the bald statuette looked like her husband whose name was Oscar. That’s the legend, and it makes for a good little anecdote to tell your family while watching the ceremony this Sunday. The year Bette Davis won her first Oscar was 1935 for Dangerous, which was given to her because she inexplicably wasn’t nominated for best actress in 1934 for Of Human Bondage, see even back then Oscars were handed out for previous mistakes.
Truth be told neither film has held up as well but despite it’s sometimes absurd melodrama, Dangerous might be the better performance, by a nose. I have no problem recommending it for people who are Davis fans or simply want to see one of the all time greats diva it up. Davis would go on to be nominated numerous other times winning again for Jezebel, and getting cries of outrage at her losses for better performances in The Letter, Little Foxes, Now Voyager, and All About Eve. However every year has it’s story, and that’s a whole other book.
Now there’s another reason why I mention 1934 and 1935 because they hold a unique mark in the history of the Academy. They were the only two years that 12 films were nominated for best picture. Looking at the films from each year they differ wildly in quality, 1934 doing a woefully bad job at justifying it’s gluttonous assortment of nominees. The 1935 nominees hold up surprisingly better, and well let’s get into them a bit.
1934
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Cleopatra
Flirtation Walk
The Gay Divorcee
Here Comes the Navy
The House of Rothschild
Imitation of Life
One Night of Love
The Thin Man
Viva Villa!
The White Parade
In case you didn’t guess, It Happened One Night was the winner, hence why it was listed first and capitalized. I could also have capitalized it because it’s by far the best film nominated, and I mean by far. In fact It Happened One Night was the first film to win all the major awards, a feat repeated by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. A feat that isn’t too easy considering there isn’t even a film nominated in all four categories this year. Any list of the best classic films would recognize this as one of the all time bests, Oscars notwithstanding. It set Frank Capra up as Hollywood’s best director for the remainder of the decade as he won the first of three Oscars in 5 years, a feat never repeated, and not likely to.
Now then as now Davis supporters argued that her performance should have won, and at the very least been officially nominated. However Claudette Colbert may have just as easily been given an award for her body of work for the year. In the first show actors were selected for every film they did in a year, hence why Janet Gaynor won for Sunrise, Street Angel, and Seventh Heaven and Emil Jannings won for The Last Command and Way of All Flesh. Claudette Colbert was the first of eventually four people who would appear in 3 best picture nominees in the same year (also appearing in Imitation of Life and Cleopatra), I’ll fill you in on who another actor to earn that distinction is soon enough. Based on her competition of opera singer Grace Moore for One Night of Love and Norma Shearer for The Barretts of Wimpole Street I’d say Colbert certainly seemed worthy. Shearer was the original Peter O’Toole getting nominated several times without an Oscar to show for it, although history hasn’t been as kind to her extremely dated period films that were the epitome of MGM’s high gloss yet mediocre style at the time.
Like the actress race, there were only three best actor nominees, which you’re right if you think that’s really odd considering there were 12 best picture nominees. Gable’s competition was Frank Morgan in Affairs of Cellini and William Powell for The Thin Man, probably the second best film nominated for best picture that year. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone who has seen Affairs of Cellini so I’d say forgettable is an apt description that year. Danny Peary offered John Barrymore as his Alternate Oscar choice for Twentieth Century, but warning you he goes WAY over the top there, but that’s kinda the point.
I can’t think of any other year that deserved fewer best picture nominees. In fact had It Happened One Night, Cleopatra, and The Thin Man gotten a nomination and nothing else it wouldn’t have mattered much. I’ve seen only 41 films from that year, and of those 41 I’d give a 5 star rating to only three (Man of Aran and King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread to go along with It Happened One Night). So keep in mind that if 10 nominees seem like too much, it could be much worse you could have 12.
Ignorance alert, although I just watched Here Comes the Navy today, I’m yet to find a copy of The White Parade. 1934 has been the hardest year to complete in my Oscar quest, considering those two films along with House of Rothschild were never even released on VHS let alone DVD. So if it’s a year you feel like exploring further good luck it won’t be too easy.
1935
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY
Alice Adams
The Broadway Melody of 1936
Captain Blood
David Copperfield
The Informer
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Les Miserables
Naughty Marietta
Ruggles of Red Gap
Top Hat
Well from a cursory glance at this years nominees you can see noticeable upturn in quality. Many people still regard Mutiny on the Bounty as one of the all time classics, and it’s certainly a step up from the big budget snore fest starring Marlon Brando that inexplicably got a best picture nomination in 1962. It also earned the unique distinction of being the first with three best actor nominees, and go figure the winner was the only nominee not from that film, Victor McLaglen for The Informer. The Informer has dated very badly and McLaglen’s performance is obnoxious at best, but fans of Ford will still appreciate his German Expressionism interpretation, a film which won him the first of a record 4 best director Oscars.
Contributing to the strange inconsistencies of the Academy at the time, they nominated 4 people for best actor, and 6 for best actress, and 4 for best director. As mentioned earlier Davis won her Oscar for Dangerous, beating out Katherine Hepburn for Alice Adams, Miriam Hopkins for Becky Sharp and a few others who I am not at liberty to compare.
Charles Laughton was this year’s beneficiary of the 12 nominee rule when he became the second actor to appear in three best picture nominees. Like Colbert, Thomas Mitchell (1939), and John C. Reilly (2002) he appeared in the best picture winner as well as two of his competitors. Laughton was also in Les Miserables and Ruggles of Red Cap which have held up well over the years. Ruggles of Red Cap is one of the year’s funniest performances and is a welcome change of pace after the two monstrous literary villains he played in the other films. You could do a lot worse than having a 1935 Charles Laughton night.
Fred and Ginger appeared in a best picture nominee for the second straight year with their best film Top Hat which helps add even more credibility to a vastly improved Oscar class. Perhaps the only two major snubs that year would be the Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera and James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, but then as now horror films seldom get any love. Although no year is perfect and just as today’s Oscar crop features several films that did absolutely nothing for me, there are still a few worthy candidates and a couple of favorites that were left off the ballot, history repeating itself for sure.
2010
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone
So that brings us up to the present. Our crop of best picture nominees is decent here. Unlike The Blind Side last year there isn’t really a film that make me dry heave here. Truth be told if I were ruling the world, and god willing someday I will only two of these films would be on my list, see my previously posted top 10 to see which. That doesn’t mean I hate the other 8 nominees at all. Quite the contrary, I’m sure another viewing of The Social Network will probably have me drinking the same kool-aid as everyone else, and I really did love Toy Story 3.
I hate to say that The Black Swan is a tad bit overrated. Not a bad film, but perhaps the bar was set too high for me and Mr. Aronofsky with Requiem for a Dream and I’ve been waiting for him to reach that mark again. Natalie Portman practically already won her Oscar and I’m just happy Meryl Streep isn’t nominated, no offense to the Queen mother of all actresses but enough is enough, really Julie and Julia? Much needed break there. Michelle Williams would be a nice dark horse candidate but her co-star Ryan Gosling was unfairly left out of the best actor race considering I’d pick his performance over all five best actor nominees. Sorry that stuttering doesn’t impress nearly as much as everyone else, but I know my cries will fall on deaf ears considering how much buzz is going Collin Firth’s way for The King’s Speech.
My main complaint with this years nominees is a similar one to last year, where the fuck are all the foreign films? I mean based on bizarre and incomprehensible Academy bi-laws that make their foreign language Oscar completely worthless in terms of respectability, they can at least make up the difference by recognizing some of those subtitled features in the big race. After all you expect any well informed film goer to believe that the ten best films from the year were all American? Don’t bother to point out British co-productions, they’re as American as apple pie, I’m looking at you King’s Speech with your echo of old Miramax glory hounding. Now perhaps the Academy didn’t have to make half the nominees foreign as I would have, but at least one. Considering how few foreign language films have ever even been nominated, and none since Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000, expanding the nominees to ten seems like an even bigger slap in the face to films from other countries. Perhaps the tide will turn next year.
So here’s a quick list of what probably will win, and what I’d like to win:
Best Picture
Likely to win - The Social Network
My pick - Inception
Best Actor
Likely to win - Collin Firth (The King’s Speech)
My pick - Javier Bardem (Biutiful) - not that great of a film, but he’s the best of this bunch
Best Actress
Likely to win - Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
My pick - Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Best Director
Likely to win - David Fincher (The Social Network)
My pick - David O’Russell (The Fighter) - although I wouldn’t mind if Fincher or Aronofsky got their’s
So there you go, we’ll see whose right.
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