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.
Bfl
Absolutely agree on Singin’ in the Rain, because it is the greatest of all time, period. Meet Me in St. Louis is also a great musical, a great movie.
Disagree on Pinocchio, although can’t say if it was the best that year. As I recall it was not really a big hit, rather a flop. I managed to see something of it again a while ago, and bottom line it is too long. Or at least the different segments are too long, or in some cases unnecessary.
2001 is a snooze fest I still can’t get through.
I wouldn’t mind seeing him suffer if I also saw his ministry time with his disciples after he had risen from the dead, when he ate with them, or when they walked with him on the road to Emmaus. The short scene of him getting up from the tomb was just not satisfactory enough to me. The whole rising from the dead was a big fulfilling purpose of all that he had to go through, not the other way around. If anything, that’s why I enjoyed another Jesus film, which I am trying to recall, in which there was some blood shown, but it did have him risen and talking to his disciples afterwards, it also showed Satan as a mobster, and showed him having visions of WWII. Now, if someone could just gladly help me figure exactly what that film was I would so gladly get a hold of a copy for keeps...
I think it’s just The Haunting.
Still haven’t seen it. And my husband wouldn’t want to. Ghosts make him uncomfortable.
I like “2001”. Deep, dark, slow moving, and trippy. And I like how it overlays the 1960s onto the future. I want hot space stewardesses to bring me my meals.
The book and movie were actually done concurrently, with some script changes, but not all, included in the book.
I loved it! Stalag 17 was a great movie!
I used to be a big fan of 2001. I still enjoy the special effects which still look great. I like the actors and all the stuff with H.A.L., which is classic. The soundtrack album helped get me into classical music. However, these days I see the whole evolution concept of the movie as rather over the top. The fetus floating in space representing the 'birth of the superman' strikes me as ridiculous now.
IMO, the great Kubrick film is Barry Lyndon.
***Tom Jones is still one of the most spectacular films ever made.***
One of my favorite British movies! Much better than the 12 years later Barry Lyndon, mocked in MAD magazine as “Borey Lyndon”.
Not a Halloween goes by when I don't watch this movie! It is definitely the stick to measure other of it's kind by.
That didn’t make any sense and the best actor was HAL
Good gosh, no.
But it made for a decent TV sitcom.
It was called "Hogan's Heroes."
I read the article. Some people just don’t want conservative films. It is evident on here to that conservative movies don’t play well with conservatives. Hollywood has tried and tried, but conservative films hardly make a dime. Then they put out really horrible movies like An American Carol which was praised on Free Republic and when I saw it I was embarrassed by my FRiends at what they consider a good film. I will take Son of God over An American Carol any day of the week. I really loved Courageous but nobody went to see it but me apparently because it didn’t make any money at the box office. The only conservative movie to make money was The Passion of Christ. We need to convince Hollywood to make good movies but if they do and you complain about nonsense like keeping out 8 hours of the original then we are never going to see conservative movies and quite frankly that is a shame.
“I think anybody who sat through Kubrick’s turgid “2001, etc” without falling asleep half way through should get some kind of award.”
I’ll have to go without an award. I don’t think I’ve ever lasted thru 15 minutes. The film could be used to replace waterboarding.
I didn’t like “2001: A Space Oddity” when I saw it in the theater. I was told at the time that you had to read the book to understand the movie, which a moviegoer should not have to do.
The book was just the screenplay of the movie, which was based on Clark's short story, The Sentinel.
I loved that movie, and watched it maybe 4 or 5 times in the theater, but I've finally had to admit that it hasn't really aged well. You know though, there were people badmouthing it even then. It's probably the single movie that had a big affect on my personal outlook. Note that Zefferelli's ROMEO AND JULIET came out the same year and was at least nominated. This was another movie that blew my socks off. I note that Carol Reed won for Best Director over both Zefferelli and Kubrik.
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