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22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • February 25-March 2, 2016
They coulda been contenders by Tavo Amador
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o matter how many terrific films are nominated for Best Picture, only one will win the Oscar. OK, the 1927-28 awards honored two movies, The Last Command and Wings, but that hasn’t happened since. Rather than second-guess the winners, it’s worth looking at some excellent contenders that didn’t cop the top prize. In 1931-32, Grand Hotel, MGM’s pioneering all-star melodrama starring Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, took Oscar home. Among the other nominees was Joseph von Sternberg’s dazzling Shanghai Express, in which Marlene Dietrich unforgettably explained, “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lili.” Cavalcade won in 1932-33, but openly gay George Cukor’s superb Little Women, with a flawless Katharine Hepburn as Jo, remains vivid. Fans of classic Hollywood hail 1939 as its greatest year. Gone With the Wind was the big winner, although today The Wizard of Oz would likely prevail. But the New York Film Critics selected William Wyler’s splendid version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Merle Oberon was an exquisite Cathy, and Laurence Olivier, as Heathcliff, credited Wyler for teaching him how to act for the movies. Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant Rebecca (1940) made a star of Joan Fontaine, but John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath remains memorable. How Green Was My Valley would win the next year, but Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane is still astonishing. In 1944, Double Indemnity, a landmark noir,
and Gaslight, a riveting melodrama, lost to Going My Way. The Lost Weekend (1945) was a searing look at alcoholism, but Mildred Pierce, Crawford’s Oscar-winning comeback, is a remarkable noir/weepy. Winner Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947) exposed American antiSemitism, while David Lean’s Great Expectations brought Dickens to life. All About Eve triumphed in 1950, but has anyone forgotten Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond insisting, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small” in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard? Among the losers to 1951’s An American in Paris was Elia Kazan’s censored but powerful version of gay Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, with Vivien Leigh’s haunting Blanche battling Marlon Brando’s brutish Stanley. That same year, George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun revealed a steamy, 19-year-old Elizabeth Taylor symbolizing all of Montgomery Clift’s doomed aspirations. Wyler’s BenHur swept the 1959 prizes, but Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder is a sharp look at trial lawyers, with James Stewart as a cynical attorney who’s not as clever as he thinks. Also that year, Fred Zinnemann’s exceptional rendering of a spiritual dilemma in The Nun’s Story elicited a magnificent performance from Audrey Hepburn. West Side Story danced off with the 1961 prize, but Stanley Kramer’s all-star Jugment at Nuremberg memorably conveyed the complexities of the post-WWII Nazi trials. Robert Rossen’s The Hustler gave Paul Newman one of his greatest roles and remains a moving look at the world of pool sharks. In 1962,
but Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is unforgettable. Both feature an extraordinary performance by Jack Nicholson. Rocky slugged its way to victory in 1976, but All the President’s Men showed the power of a free press in exposing political corruption at the highest levels of American government. Chariots of Fire (1981) drove away with the statuette, yet Louis Malle’s touching Atlantic City is wonderful, with Burt Lancaster capturing the pain and joy of youth. Oscar caressed 1983’s Terms of Endearment, but The Big Chill still speaks to a whole generation. The Little Man traveled Out of Africa (1985), but Kiss of the Spider Woman presciently portrayed the fluidity of gender identity and homosexual behavior. Rain Man swam away with 1988’s top honor, but Dangerous Liaisons brilliantly recreated life
in late-18th-century France. Glenn Close’s mesmerizing performance as the malicious Marquise de Merteuil remains stunning. Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) edged out James Ivory’s superb adaptation of gay E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End. Audiences swooned over 1996’s The English Patient, but many visited Fargo, Joel Coen’s quirky masterpiece. The Titanic (1997) may have sunk, but it sailed away with a host of Oscars. But Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential remains a surprising tale of Hollywood in the 1950s. In 2000 Gladiator fought its way to victory, but Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich showcased Julia Roberts, earning her Best Actress. It reminds audiences that one person can make a difference in battling corporate corruption. Rob Marshall’s Chicago (2002) was the first musical since Oliver! (1968) to take the award, beating out Stephen Daldry’s elegant adaptation of The Hours, which earned Nicole Kidman an Oscar for her portrayal of bisexual Virginia Woolf. Crash (2005) is forgotten, but not Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as doomed cowboy lovers. No Country for Old Men (2007) won, but George Clooney and Tilda Swinton were unforgettable in Michael Clayton, a complex legal thriller. The prize in 2011 went to The Artist, but Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is romantic and moving. 12 Years a Slave (2013) was an important winner, but American Hustle gripped viewers as they watched a con game unfold. So if your favorite film doesn’t win, don’t despair. It’s in great company.t
Oscar” rule. Both won in categories that have honored itty-bitty performances by Beatrice Straight in Network and Karl Malden in A Streetcar Named Desire. The problem of the Academy’s you-tell-us-where-to-put-thisperformance policy went to full-tilt lunacy with the female races of 2002. The Hours was a trilogy film for three actresses exploring, among other things, lesbian desire in different eras. Each had about 30 minutes of screen time. Even so, one of them (Nicole Kidman) went into the lead category, and another (Julianne Moore) went supporting. Kidman won against Moore in another film, Far From Heaven, in which her performance was the unequivocal lead. Meanwhile, Moore lost the supporting race to Catherine Zeta-Jones, who gave a lead performance, but was shoved into supporting so as not to compete with Chicago co-star Renée Zellweger. Meanwhile Queen Latifah, also in Chicago, lost out to Zeta-Jones in a genuinely supporting role. It was Alice in Wonderland time. Kidman won Best Actress for a supporting/ensemble turn, while Zeta-Jones won Best Supporting Actress for a leading role. I’m not advocating a return to the plantation days of the Studio System, or stopwatch criteria for who goes where. But how about some clarity on how actors are honored? Go ahead, Academy, say it. “Rooney Mara has a leading role in Carol.” That wasn’t so tough, was it?t Because it destroys the print. It chews it up, it would be worthless after two or three screenings. How many theaters can there be that even have dual projection? Here in SF there’s the Alamo Drafthouse, the Castro and the Roxie. Even the Roxie is moving away from 16mm, which is another way for people to see films on film.t
Marlene Dietrich in director Joseph von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, which lost out on the Oscar.
Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia rode off with Oscar, but audiences still adore To Kill a Mockingbird. Zinnemann’s victorious A Man for All Seasons (1966) dramatized the conflict between Henry VIII and Pope Leo X, but that year marked Mike Nichols’ spectacular debut, helming gay Edward Albee’s scathing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which earned Taylor a second Best Actress Oscar for her tormented Martha. Patton (1970) marched off with the award, but Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H was an original look at how medical staff cope with the horrors of combat. Oscar couldn’t refuse Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), but Cabaret, Bob Fosse’s explosive debut, is a glittering musical look at the rise of the Nazis. Milos Foreman’s terrifying One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest soared off with 1975’s prize,
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Category fraud, an Academy tradition by Matthew Kennedy
hile the Academy slogs hipdeep through a public relations fiasco on race and exclusion, there is another matter to discuss, albeit less pernicious. It’s on display in this year’s nominations for Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in Carol, that exquisite drama of 1950s lesbian love. Both women share the screen in a true co-star partnership; it could just as well have been titled Carol and Therese. But Blanchett is up for Best Actress, and Mara for Best Supporting. While we’re on the subject, this year’s The Danish Girl Supporting Actress nominee Alicia Vikander gave a lead performance, too. What’s with the free-floating criteria saying a lead performance goes in a supporting race, and vice versa? A little history is in order. The supporting acting categories began in 1936 to honor performances that made great impact with limited screen time. In the days of studio hierarchy, the distinction was explicit in contracts, credit, and at awards time. While Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, James Cagney, and Bette Davis vied for lead honors, magnificent character players infused the supporting rosters: Basil Rathbone, Walter Brennan, Beulah Bondi, Claire Trevor, Hattie McDaniel, Claude Rains, Edna May Oliver, Judith Anderson, Agnes Moorehead, Sydney Greenstreet, Van Heflin, and Gladys Cooper. Flash-forward to 2016, and the leading/supporting differences are
in a mess. Conventional wisdom holds that two actors in the same film will cancel each other’s vote, so in hopes of scoring nominations, producers position actors in categories that don’t fit the performances. Well, conventional wisdom isn’t necessarily correct. There’s a beefy list of winning actors who weren’t cancelled out by a competing co-star: Hattie McDaniel, Teresa Wright, Bing Crosby, Celeste Holm, Maximilian Schell, Helen Hayes, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Tatum O’Neal, Robert De Niro, Peter Finch, Jason Robards, Meryl Streep,
Timothy Hutton, Jessica Lange, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, F. Murray Abraham, Dianne Wiest, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Melissa Leo, and Octavia Spencer. While lead heterosexual pairings of the cinema (Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in Reds) fit snugly in their respective gendered categories, no such accommodations exist for same-sex pairings. Once upon a time two actors or actresses in the same film could both be nominated as leads: Bette Davis and Anne Baxter in All
About Eve, Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton in Becket, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger in Terms of Endearment. Win or lose, at least the game was honest. Stars Walter Matthau and George Burns of The Sunshine Boys got sent to different categories. So too were Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal, and Health Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. Something’s amiss here. It’s not right that the Academy says of Brokeback, “It’s the Ennis show, also featuring Jack.” To further complicate, it’s not enough to assign performances their place based solely on screen time. There is a tradition of supporting performances winning as leads, assumedly because their actors dominate their films. There’s Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld, David Niven in Separate Tables, Patricia Neal in Hud, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, and Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. Some cases of category fraud are horrendous. Tatum O’Neal dominated all of Paper Moon, then won Best Supporting Actress over Madeline Kahn, who gave a poignant brief performance in the same film. Timothy Hutton was the de facto lead in Ordinary People, which revolved around his character’s anguish. He and O’Neal were minors when they won, so perhaps the Academy had some strange “Must be 21 to win a lead
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fewer. Even in a city like San Francisco, where there should be a theater like this in every neighborhood.
care and appreciation on behalf of the studios. Universal’s great actually, they’re like the gatekeepers with their library. Every Universal print I get is gorgeous. It’s not the case with Warners necessarily, but they have a larger library and it’s rather unwieldy. Sometimes when a print comes in from Warners you’re crossing your fingers and hoping for the
best, but at least it’s a place where you can get prints. But there are fewer and fewer theaters that can show them. Part of the problem, too, is in order to show archive prints, you have to have a reel-to-reel projection system. The alternative is the platter system, and no studio is going to let any archive print be plattered. You have to sign that in blood!
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Elliot Lavine
From page 21
David Lamble: What do you see for the future of America’s remaining movie palaces like the Castro? Elliot Lavine: That’s a tough question, because emotionally I don’t want to give you the answer, but I feel eventually there will be fewer and
Tatum O’Neal (here, with father Ryan) dominated all of Paper Moon, then won for Best Supporting Actress.
Well, the Royal’s gone, and the Gateway. So I would say overall it’s pretty grim. Studios are becoming less and less interested in sending out prints. They will send out 35mm prints, there’s still a great level of