Academic Questioning

If you follow the Oscars, then it’s de rigueur that you play the game of second-guessing, of castigating the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for being such Philistines (i.e., for having different taste than you). But let it be said upfront that over the years the academy has made some outstanding selections.

Who could knock the academy for bestowing its best picture award on “It Happened One Night,” “Casablanca,” “The Apartment” or “Annie Hall”? They are among the movies whose status as best picture winners made perfect sense in their day, and they hold up beautifully today.

But from time to time the academy’s choices have been, at best, misguided; at worst, downright absurd. I’m not talking about mere differences of opinion. Reasonable people can argue, for example, that the morbid sentimentality of Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” is more affecting than the brittle wit of the film that defeated it for best picture of 1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve.” There can be little disagreement, though, that “Eve” remains an exceptionally literate and sophisticated achievement.

In getting to the heart of why certain achievements have been recognized on Oscar night, the first thing to realize is that the Academy Awards do not occur in a cultural or sociological vacuum. Human nature being what it is, the judgment of the voters will never be based solely on what’s up there on the screen. Contemporary political currents can weigh heavily on the voters’ decisions, but in Hollywood the personal is political too. If, say, an actress engages in an unseemly diva-like attitude on the set, odds are no academy member who had to work with her would vote for her.

There are best picture winners that were very topical and considered highly significant when they were released but now seem utterly ordinary. This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Elia Kazan, won his first Oscar for 1947’s “Gentleman’s Agreement,” in which Protestant writer Gregory Peck disguises himself to see what it’s like to be a middle-class Jew. Half a century later, even the director’s most passionate admirers--and those who shrug off his squealing to the House Un-American Activities Committee--take little note of this film. What was daring in 1947 has become rather fusty.

Based on a best-selling novel, “Gentleman’s Agreement” was touted by 20th Century Fox as its major release that year, another of the socially conscious Important Films made by its liberal Republican studio head, Darryl Zanuck.

A second study of anti-Semitism nominated for best picture of 1947, “Crossfire” (curiously, also made by someone who would go on to name names to HUAC, Edward Dmytryk--although he did jail time first) is now held in higher esteem than “Gentleman’s Agreement.” Because its pleas for tolerance come within the context of a violent, visually striking film noir genre-piece, “Crossfire” has a greater immediacy for contemporary audiences. It’s been pointed out that the difference between the two films is that in the Kazan movie, if you’re Jewish, you don’t get a hotel room; in the Dmytryk film, you get murdered.

At the time, the gentility of “Gentleman’s Agreement” was precisely what made it palpable for academy voters--it was far removed from the pulpy crime melodramas that were “Crossfire’s” antecedents.

“Gentleman’s Agreement” was considered a milestone, a momentous example of the screen being used as a force for Good. Today, it’s a mere footnote to film history, more interesting for the mature relationship between its lovers, Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire--and for supporting actress winner Celeste Holm’s incisive performance as a modern but lonely postwar woman--than for its polemics.

Ironically, of the five best picture nominees in 1947, the one that has held up best is the one that back then seemed most trivial, George Seaton’s “Miracle on 34th Street.”

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Tonight’s other special Oscar honoree, Irving Thalberg Award winner Norman Jewison, was also the director of a film whose status as a best picture needs explaining. One wonders how in 1967 the academy could possibly have chosen between “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate,” two of the truly landmark and influential works of American cinema. It didn’t: The Oscar that year was given to “In the Heat of the Night.” The film is a taut and well-observed murder-mystery, and director Jewison was, as usual, terrific in handling his actors and in conveying a sharply realized sense of time and place. But this is a movie that’s well-crafted rather than groundbreaking.

So why did it win best picture? In addition to being a whodunit, “In the Heat of the Night” features a redneck Southern sheriff who grudgingly comes to respect the Northern black detective working with him.

At the time of the 1967 Oscars, racial tensions in America were reaching a crescendo. (The awards were postponed due to the funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) Given the timbre of the period, this lesson in brotherhood simply resonated more deeply with the liberal sentiments of academy voters than did the hip cynicism of “The Graduate” or the romantic fatalism of “Bonnie and Clyde.”

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To a significant degree, Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” owed its 1952 Oscar night success to politics. In 1950, when liberal and reactionary factions in the Directors Guild waged a ferocious internecine battle over an anti-Communist loyalty oath, it was DeMille who led forces on the right. His group lost but his stewardship made him a darling of Hollywood conservatives, and he remained a dominant voice as political conflicts escalated within the industry over the next few years.

The winner of the New York Film Critics award for best picture of 1952, “High Noon,” had been expected to carry the day at the Oscars as well. A box-office hit (although not nearly as big as “The Greatest Show on Earth”), the film was considered by many reviewers to have brought a new stature and seriousness to the western, and it gave the much-loved Gary Cooper his best role in years. (Best director winner John Ford’s Irish idyll, “The Quiet Man,” may have been the best-liked movie that year, but it was released by Republic, and the academy was loath to give best picture to a film not made by one of the major studios, which dominated the membership and pressured their employees to vote for their respective candidates.)

By the 1952 awards, the second wave of the blacklist was in full swing, with a number of the town’s most prominent writers having fled the country. One of these exiles was “High Noon’s” Carl Foreman. The absurdly influential gossip monger Hedda Hopper led the charge against Foreman and his movie, indignantly reminding her readers that the good people who opposed the Red Menace--such as herself--were implicitly vilified as the bad guys in “High Noon.” Besides, as far as she was concerned, “High Noon” couldn’t match the sheer entertainment value of “The Greatest Show on Earth” with its train crash and Betty Hutton on a trapeze.

The Oscars inevitably turned into a political referendum, and academy voters took a stand against Foreman and Communism by declaring “The Greatest Show on Earth” the best picture. The best actor award did go to Cooper, who had been a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and, showing that “High Noon” did have its admirers in the academy, the film also won for film editing, song and score.

Current events can influence in less direct ways. “The Sting” is an inconsequential if amiable piece of fluff that played into the ‘70s nostalgia craze. A yearning for what seemed to be simpler times was the zeitgeist that led to “The Sting’s” being named best picture of 1973. Its 1930s setting and determinedly old-fashioned entertainment seemed the perfect antidote to the malaise that engulfed the country during Richard M. Nixon’s final year in office. (There was another piece of nostalgia nominated for best picture of 1973, but, despite a surface lightheartedness, the specter of Vietnam and the upheavals of the late ‘60s hovered menacingly over the characters of “American Graffiti.”)

Occasionally, the academy (along with the press and the public, for that matter) simply gets bamboozled by a huge promotional campaign. In 1956, flamboyant impresario Mike Todd’s juggernaut of a publicity machine and his shrewd marketing skills (“It’s not a movie,” he proclaimed, “it’s an experience!”) had everyone convinced that “Around the World in 80 Days” was the ne plus ultra in entertainment. Critics and audiences alike deemed the film an awe-inspiring travelogue, a delightful comedy and, with its huge array of cameo appearances by big-time stars, a spectacular show-biz extravaganza. Today, “Around the World in 80 Days” plays as a heavy-handed piece of would-be whimsy; once you’ve sat through it, you never want to see it again.

Two decades later, publicity propelled another overblown film to Oscardom. In 1976, flacks at United Artists relentlessly churned out the bathetic real-life story of Sylvester Stallone (little-known actor writes heart-tugging script in a couple of days and eschews big bucks to star himself), and the media repeated the tale ad nauseam as “Rocky” hit theaters.

Audiences were carried away by the manipulative feel-good boxing yarn, and academy members followed suit: Buying into the calculated underdog qualities of both the movie and its star-screenwriter, they gave best picture to “Rocky,” not “Taxi Driver,” “All the President’s Men,” “Network” or “Bound for Glory” (the Hal Ashby biography of Woody Guthrie that’s crying out to be rediscovered).

Throughout the 1980s, the academy exhibited a weakness for dull sincerity: “Chariots of Fire,” “Gandhi,” “Out of Africa” and “Rain Man.” These winners no longer engender much enthusiasm, whereas movies they defeated--”Reds,” “E.T.,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “Dangerous Liaisons”--continue to stimulate movie fans. From the more recent past, Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” is the best picture winner most likely to cause future generations to shake their heads, especially since it vanquished “Babe.”

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Opinions regarding the acting awards are, if anything, more subjective than those about best picture winners. But here are a few academy choices that have been widely second-guessed.

Grace Kelly is a deservedly enduring screen idol, the most soignee of movie stars; in her Hitchcock films, for instance, her effortless sophistication is breathtaking.

So what did she have to do to win an Oscar? Put on a dowdy housedress and give the single-mannered performance of her career in 1954’s “The Country Girl.” Voters decided that Kelly’s making herself drab constituted real acting. Worse, her victory deprived Judy Garland of an Oscar for her tour de force in “A Star Is Born.” “Star” was Garland’s first film in four years, but its less than stellar box-office performance, as well as Garland’s temperamental off-camera behavior, neutralized the academy’s intrinsic sentimental streak.

Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson and Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie Parker are two of the seminal characters of the 1960s, and yet they lost as best actress to Katharine Hepburn in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” one of the least challenging roles of her career. The reason: Spencer Tracy had died after finishing “Dinner” and those mushy academy members used the opportunity to pay tribute to the quarter-century Tracy-Hepburn love affair.

Many years earlier, it was Hepburn who lost because of sentimentality. Ginger Rogers received the Oscar for “Kitty Foyle” in 1940, mostly as an acknowledgment of the perky actress’ success in stepping out on her own after having kissed Fred Astaire goodbye. So Hepburn’s classic portrayal of Tracy Lord in “The Philadelphia Story” fell by the wayside, as did two more for the ages, Joan Fontaine in “Rebecca” and Bette Davis in “The Letter.”

Shirley Knight once denigrated Hollywood as the place “where they give Academy Awards to Charlton Heston for acting.” Heston’s victory came as a result of “Ben-Hur’s” sweep at the 1959 Oscars. While one may lament that James Stewart in “Anatomy of a Murder” and Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot” lost out, Heston’s earnest performance as the galley slave who makes good is genuinely iconographic--and as such, the stuff Oscars were made for.

Actor Aldo Ray’s incomparable assessment was, “I think the Academy Awards are ridiculous. This guy Charlton Heston is a nice fellow, but what a ham-ola.”

Then there are the “lifetime achievement” wins. It is somewhat silly that, given their bodies of work, Paul Newman and Al Pacino should have been honored for “The Color of Money” and “Scent of a Woman,” respectively. Still, who could grouse about these two longtime stars having Oscars in their possession, even if they came via such minor vehicles?

And so it continues. Pick any category, any year, and you’ll find someone with a personal beef, ready to launch into an impassioned argument. Just don’t get me started about Joe Pesci’s goofy scenery-chewing in “GoodFellas” beating Bruce Davison’s beautifully nuanced work in “Longtime Companion.” My only solace is that, with his subsequent career having proved Pesci to be a tiresome one-trick pony, his selection as best supporting actor of 1990 seems more foolish than ever.