Posted on 03/01/2014 7:11:00 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Anytime you’re tempted to care too much about what’s going on with the Oscars, consider the list of great movies that should have won Best Picture yet weren’t even nominated in that category.
The landmark in special effects and fantasy captivated the imagination and heralded a new era in which anything anyone could dream up became a cinematic possibility. The closing line was so perfect that Peter Jackson couldn’t resist using it again in his remake seven decades later. But Oscar was obsessed with historical sweep at the time, and gave its top award to the generational family saga Cavalcade.
Sure, it won an honorary Oscar, because even the Academy couldn’t ignore how Walt Disney devised a richer, more mature approach to animation that captured the shivery drama and the atavistic appeal of fairy tales. The winner was one of those noble but stiff historical pictures, The Life of Emile Zola.
This time Disney conjured up a deep, dark vision even more unsettling and morally and Biblically grounded. It was to be the finest animated film he ever made. Hitchcock’s Rebecca, the winner, is also a classic and perhaps the top romantic noir of the era but the little wooden boy should have won by a nose.
Like such contemporaries as Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges had a cynical take on everything that feels very modern, but in this fable of a wealthy Hollywood director (Joel McCrea) who thinks he’s going to find the real America by becoming a poverty tourist (inspired by a novel called O Brother, Where Art Thou?) Sturges aimed higher and delivered a dark comedy with uncommon wisdom. The winner was instead a teary piece of wartime propaganda about plucky Brits holding up their end, Mrs. Miniver.
Bing Crosby’s warm and funny Going My Way was the big hit of the year and not a terrible choice for the top Oscar, but the musical that brought Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland together is the kind of family-friendly joy bomb that can be (and should be) re-watched every holiday season.
Hollywood’s intellectual inferiority complex was never more apparent than when the Academy chose starchy, stagey prestige over grand entertainment and selected Larry Olivier’s Hamlet over Howard Hawks and John Wayne’s Red River. John Ford was said to have seen a whole new side of his frequent collaborator, saying of Wayne, “I didn’t know the big son of a bitch could act!”
Possibly the most boneheaded move ever made by the Academy was ignoring the single greatest musical comedy ever in favor of one of the most rancid pieces of melodramatic garbage ever to even be nominated for best picture, the brainless circus melodrama The Greatest Show on Earth.
A straight-up shot of intoxicating Billy Wilder, this hilarious, wised-up comedy-mystery about a cynical POW played to perfection by William Holden was decades ahead of its time and far superior to a much soapier and more on-the-nose approach to WW II, From Here to Eternity.
Acclaimed by a recent Sight and Sound poll as the greatest film ever made, this psychosexual Hitchcock freakout was simply too bizarre for its time and can’t fully be absorbed on a first viewing, so the top nod went to the colorful, cute Gigi.
By this point Billy Wilder had built up such an impressive body of work that the Academy felt like blessing his second-tier romcom The Apartment over Hitchcock’s unforgettable thriller.
Brawny all-American action pictures never stand much of a chance if they’re up against costume pieces featuring lots of British accents, and so the Academy went with the now-forgotten comedy Tom Jones.
As a new generation was coming of age, the old guard resisted (the previous year, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate lost to the mediocre police and race drama In the Heat of the Night). In ‘68, the G-rated singing orphan show Oliver! was the inexplicable big winner. From this point forward, though, Hollywood became considerably less obtuse, and the following year reversed course to give top honors to the X-rated Midnight Cowboy.
Cameron Crowe’s strange, enticing, big-hearted memoir is a one-of-a-kind treat, whereas Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is glossy entertainment that simply put a fresh coat of paint on Spartacus.
Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg’s Pinocchio update was mind-blowing sci-fi that was ten times as interesting as Ron Howard’s hokey one-twist redemption drama A Beautiful Mind.
No, what was released last night was merely an abridged, santized version of what was already shown on cable. And the cable TV show was blander than stale matzah.
Oddly, the sequel was far, far better.
btw, i do like Vertigo--however, best pic? i do not think so... it is not even one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, and i am partial to it because of its being located in the Bay Area...
Preston Sturges REALLY displayed his”Depth”with”Sullivan’s Travels”!!!
2001: A Space Odyssey was a good book, but the movie was boring beyond words and didn’t make any sense unless you had read the book.
Yes that reality that Jesus was whipped, crowned with thorns, and nailed to a cross probably could get in the way of your fantasy world of what Christ went through so that you can have a chance at Heaven. My wife and I loved the movie so much. I am shocked by your criticism of it being uneducated, it was absolutely educational. And to complain that Jesus was tortured. I definitely think you should stay far away from the Passion of Christ because you will have a heart attack seeing what Jesus went through on that one.
You know what? You make me furious. What liberally white-washed TV show being released as a movie? Give me facts instead of nonsense.
Actually, it was FALSE accusations about the film's "anti-Semitism" that kept it from being nominated.
One, Two, Three is a great overlooked movie.
And, like Sullivan’s Travels has a non-Lefty message.
I have a very amusing memory of seeing this movie on late night TV, with commercial interruptions but still with a voice over introducer.
After one commercial he announced: Now we return to our feature: “Eins, Zwei, Drei”
2001 was not a well made movie. Interesting from a “cult” type movie perspective but certainly not Best Picture material.
And now for an opposing point of view...
2001 came out in 1968; I was in eighth grade and living in Japan. Over the next year, I went to see the movie at least 14 times, including losing the chance at a girl friend over it (I took her to the movie, then spent the remainder of the date trying to explain the movie, and that was our last date). To steal an old 7-UP ad line, 2001 was the un-movie, which is one reason why, when 2010 was made a generation later, it was much more of the traditional plot and archetypal characters that movie audiences have learned to expect. I will occasionally watch it now, but more for nostalgia than fascination, since so much of the techniques and technology in the movie is outdated.
I can’t believe that The Great Escape (1963) couldn’t win an award, especially with the performances of Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough in that film.
If I remember correctly, the book was actually written after the movie was shot.
They are nuts. Tom Jones is still one of the most spectacular films ever made. It made Albert Finney and instant star in his tour-de-force.
Except "what Jesus went through" in The Passion was NOT in the Gospel, but taken from the writings of Sister Anne Emmerich and Mary of Agreda. I still loved the film, but it is not strictly based on Scripture.
Speaking of Finney, he should have won an Oscar for "The Gathering Storm." He WAS Churchill.
A.I.? If there was an award for most ponderous third act it should win by a landslide, otherwise no.
"Agreed, "2001" was awful, except it had some good photography and music.
I can say that Special FX aren’t all that great alone by themselves. Fitting the FX into the story is the big key. Great Escape, despite being from back in 1963, is entertaining from the fact that you can see real stuntmen doing their thing, and not CG imitations of the person.
Clash of the Titans (the original) is immensely entertaining for how well Harryhausen pushed at doing claymation in the Krakken and the other mythological monsters. How they played with the lighting on Medusa in the original made her scary enough I was glad she was fake, otherwise, my bladder would empty real fast.
I would say, however, that it actually took the novel for me to appreciate the film 2001. Mostly because the novel allowed me to have somewhat of a background understanding of what was going on.
I always thought the book came first, but it didn’t.
Interesting article about it here at wikipedia.
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29
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