1970 • 1971 • 1972 • 1973 • 1974 • 1975 • 1976 • 1977 • 1978 • 1979 * Indicates that the film/performance was not nominated for an Academy Award in this category
1970
Patton
Actor: George C. Scott (Patton)
Actress: Glenda Jackson (Women in Love) Supporting Actor: John Mills (Ryan's Daughter) Supporting Actress: Helen Hayes (Airport) Director: Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton)
Little
Big Man*
Actor: George C. Scott (Patton)
Actress: Glenda Jackson (Women in Love) Supporting Actor: Chief Dan George (Little Big Man) Supporting Actress: Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces) Director: Arthur Penn (Little Big Man)
Patton,
the Academy's choice for Best Picture, boasts one of the greatest,
most charismatic performances in film history from George
C. Scott in the role of World War II hero General George S.
Patton, Jr. The intense actor had already shown his skill
at playing demagogic military figures in Dr. Strangelove,
and he manages to elevate every scene in Patton in
which he appears to a higher level by the sheer alchemy of
his presence (it is hard to imagine that he was only cast
in the role after Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, and Rod Steiger
had turned it down). But take Scott (and the haunting musical
score by Jerry Goldsmith) out of the mix, and Patton crashes to the ground as a forgettably acted, unimaginatively
directed run-of-the-mill war movie. Particularly disappointing
are the dramaless battle scenes, which look like they were
thrown together on an empty lot in the San Fernando Valley.
And the film's climax where a German beaurocrat takes the
time from desperately destroying incriminating documents as
Berlin falls to reflect on an 8"x10" glossy of the
general is nothing short of laughable.
Not
nominated for Best Picture was a far more courageous and cohesive
film, Little Big Man. Not taken as seriously in its
own time as the comparable Dances With Wolves, Little
Big Man is actually far more successful at showing the
humanity of the Native Americans because it avoids the Kevin
Costner epic's path of maudlin sanctimoniousness in favor
of laugh-out-loud comedy. The Native Americans depicted in Dances With Wolves are fabricated idols of nobility
designed to manipulate. The ones in Little Big Man are flawed, soulful human beings who are designed to be alive.
And unlike Patton (which lives and breathes on the
powerful shoulders of George C. Scott), Little Big Man offers a dazzling ensemble of delightful performances surrounding
Dustin Hoffman's brilliance in the title role: Faye Dunaway,
Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan, Jeff Corey and most especially
Chief Dan George (who received the film's only nomination)
all deliver wonderfully memorable characterizations.
Worst Award
Helen
Hayes had a brief period of movie stardom in the 1930s before
realizing that her true calling was as one of the most distinguished
theatre actresses of the 20th century. She made only 16 credited
film appearances in her career, being awarded two Academy Awards
on the basis of her awesome theatrical reputation. Her 1931/32
Best Actress Oscar for the forgotten The Sin of Madelon Claudet was at least awarded for a superior performance, but her 1970
Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Airport was the worst
kind of sentimentality, and anointing her silly cameo as an
eccentric little old lady who makes a habit of stowing away
on jetliners to visit her daughter as superior to the nominated
Sally Kellerman in M*A*S*H, Karen Black in Five Easy
Pieces, Lee Grant in The Landlord, or the unnominated
Faye Dunaway in Little Big Man, Ruth Gordon in Where's
Poppa?, Jeannie Linden in Women in Love - oh, hell;
just pick the name of any female member of the Screen Actors
Guild who appeared in a movie in 1970 out of a hat, and you'd
have as good a choice as the Academy made.
Biggest Oversight
George
C. Scott made history by turning his back on the Oscars in 1970
because he didn't respect the Academy's taste, and when one
considers what was nominated it's easy to see his point. Little
Big Man's near shutout in the Oscar nominations would
be puzzling in any year, but it was particularly confusing in
1970, when the Academy nominated not one, but two, cynical pieces
of populist drivel for the Best Picture Award. Love Story and Airport were both badly written, appallingly acted
box office smashes which received multiple nominations. The
Academy, the self-appointed elite of the art of filmmaking officially
considers the plywood posing of Ryan O'Neal in Love Story to be markedly superior to Dustin Hoffman's tour de force as Jack Crabb. Helen Hayes' cutesy-poo cameo in Airport is authoritatively established as more skillful than Faye Dunaway's
sexy and manipulative Mrs. Louise Pendrake. And George Seaton's
collection of stereotypical episodes that make up the Airport screenplay has been anointed as more memorable than Calder
Willingham's brilliant job of adapting Thomas Berger's novel
to the screen. (Dick Smith's astonishing makeup for Hoffman
as the 120 year old Jack Crabb would have been a no-brainer
for the Best Makeup Award had it been given at the time, but
in retrospect the Academy voters of the period probably would
have given it to something like Godfrey Cambridge's attempts
look like a white man in Watermelon Man, with the end
result being closer to a burn victim.) It's a good thing these
experts are around to point out what constitutes real quality,
or else we'd go to our grave not recognizing true art when we
saw it.
The
French Connection
Actor: Gene Hackman (The French Connection)
Actress: Jane Fonda (Klute) Supporting Actor: Ben Johnson
(The Last Picture Show) Supporting Actress: Cloris Leachman
(The Last Picture Show) Director: William Friedkin (The French Connection)
The
Last Picture Show
Actor: Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange)*
Actress: Jane Fonda (Klute) Supporting Actor: Ben Johnson
(The Last Picture Show) Supporting Actress: Cloris Leachman
(The Last Picture Show) Director: Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show)
The
Academy tossed aside their usual preference for pretentious
prestige pictures in 1971, selecting a slam-`em-up cop movie
as the year's best. Bypassing more typical Best Picture nominees
like the inspiring Fiddler on the Roof or the dreary
Nicolas and Alexandria, they went with the exciting
cop melodrama The French Connection, only the second
Best Picture in history to feature a police officer as its
central character (the first was In the Heat of the Night in 1967). Energetically directed by William Friedkin and wonderfully
acted by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, The French Connection nevertheless seems like a lackluster Best Picture today
in part because of the many derivative rip-offs that it spawned.
But even taken on its own merits, The French Connection is a fairly empty diversion; a wonderfully made entertainment
that features an almost incomprehensibly confusing plot and
bone-rattling violence, and hardly a film that continues to
reverberate inside you after the final credits role.
Film
students would select Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange as the year's best, but it was a highly controversial in its
own day (it and Midnight Cowboy remain the only X-rated
Best Picture nominees); and while there is no denying its
savage intensity, it continues to polarize its audiences.
Some consider it among the greatest films ever made, while
others think that its relentless brutality makes it unwatchable.
Of greater universal appeal is Peter Bogdanovich's brooding
coming-of-age drama The Last Picture Show. Only his
third film after the chilling apogee to Boris Karloff's career, Targets and the best-forgotten Voyage to the Planet
of Prehistoric Women, the limitless promise that Bogdanovich
displayed with this moving tale of small town angst only sporadically
materialized in the decades since. But watching the stellar
acting of Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid, Jeff
Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, and (to a far lesser degree) Cybil
Shepard and (to a far greater degree) Ben Johnson, it's exciting
to imagine contemporary audiences' expectation of the greatness
that was surely to come.
Worst Award
The
Academy sprang back from the embarrassing picks of 1970 with
much saner choices this year, and while we may not agree with
all of their selections, we can certainly see the logic behind
them. Therefore we'll zero in on the choice of The Garden
of the Finzi-Continis for Best Foreign Film, not because
it was bad choice (although it was not on a par with director
Vittorio de Sica's best work), but because it presents one of
the more amusing complications in Oscar history. One of the
films The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was selected over
for Best Foreign Film was Jan Troell's The Emigrants.
But because the Foreign Film Oscar is on a different timetable
from the others, The Emigrants was up for awards in other
categories the following year. In 1972, it was nominated for
several awards, including Best Picture. But since The Emigrants was considered one of the five best pictures of 1972 but inferior
to The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in 1971, it would
seem to indicate that not only would The Garden of the Finzi-Continis be a certain Best Picture nominee in 1972 (since it had
already been declared as superior to The Emigrants),
but that all five Best Picture nominees for 1972 were better
than anything that wasn't nominated in 1972. So, my friends,
it's official that the interminable Nicolas and Alexandria is a better movie than Sleuth, The Heartbreak Kid, Limelight,
The Candidate or Play It Again, Sam. We just wanted
to clear that up for you.
Biggest Oversight
As
with the costume design awards, the Academy gives a leg up to
art directors who design settings that predate the 20th century.
This trend continued in 1971, with period pieces Fiddler
on the Roof, Mary, Queen of Scotts and Nicolas and Alexandria all vying for the top prize, with the stupefyingly boring Nicolas
and Alexandria taking the award home for its predictably
opulent depiction of royal decadence in pre-revolution Russia
(the two nominees with modern settings - The Andromeda Strain and Bedknobs and Broomsticks - ironically had much more
imaginative art direction than the winner). It is a rare thing
when a contemporary films win the art direction prize (only
three films that won the award in the 1970s - All the President's
Men, Heaven Can Wait and All That Jazz - were set
in the decade that they were made). This is an unfortunate trend,
since films set in contemporary settings face far greater demands
in rising above their familiarity. Few designers faced this
challenge more successfully than John Barry, Peter Sheilds
andRussell Hagg for their sterile conception of
1971 England in A Clockwork Orange. Every room in which
the ultra-violent "protagonist" Alex de Large sets
foot in has an antiseptic, dehumanized atmosphere that seems
to feed his sociopathic rage and contributes a performance as
integral to the success of the film as the superb work of Malcolm
Macdowell or Patrick Magee. Barry had a distinguished career
as a designer before his untimely death in 1979, winning an
Oscar for his indelible work on Star Wars. But both Shields'
and Hagg's output as artistic directors was sparse - Hagg only
served in that capacity on one other occasion, for 1968's Girl
on a Motorcycle, and Sheilds' only other screen credit was
as the assistant designer on the cult classic The Conqueror
Worm.
The
Godfather
Actor: Marlon Brando (The Godfather)
Actress: Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) Supporting Actor: Joel Grey (Cabaret) Supporting Actress: Eileen Heckart
(Butterflies are Free) Director: Bob Fosse (Cabaret)
The
Godfather
Actor: Al Pacino (The Godfather)
Actress: Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) Supporting Actor: James Caan (The Godfather) Supporting Actress: Ida Lupino (Junior Bonner )*
Director: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather)
1972
was a very strange year for movie awards, as the Academy managed
to honor The Godfather and snub it at the same time. One
of the most eagerly anticipated films ever made, The Godfather didn't disappoint, featuring an iconic performance by Marlon Brando
and star-making ones by Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall,
dynamic direction by Francis Coppola, and one of the most quoted
and memorable scripts in film history. After toppling The Sound
of Music as the all-time box office champ, The
Godfather was
the overwhelming favorite at the Oscars and took home the Best
Picture award. Yet
the Academy's admiration for The Godafther was grudging
at best, allotting its only additional awards to Marlon Brando
as Best
Actor and for the film's screenplay. The movie the Academy really
seemed to prefer in 1972 was Bob Fosse's comparatively forgotten
film of the stage musical Cabaret, giving it eight awards,
the most ever awarded for a film that didn't go on to win Best
Picture.
With the landmark status now afforded The Godfather, some
of the awards Cabaret was given seem very peculiar indeed
(especially Fosse's selection as Best Director over DGA winner
Coppola
and Best Supporting Actor Joel Grey over Pacino). Cabaret is a fine film on its own merit, but compared with the masterpiece
that is The Godfather, it simply ceases to exist.
But
an overview of the awards given out that year is surprising: the
only other major awards group that named The Godfather their
Best Picture was the Golden Globes. Cabaret also won that
honor from the Golden Globes (who split their classifications in
two for drama and musical/comedy), as well as the BAFTA Awards and
the National Board of Review (the New York Film Critics gave the
award to Cries and Whispers, which was not eligible for the
Oscars until the following year). Yet the AFI named The Godafther the third greatest film ever made on its 1998 compilation of the
hundred greatest films and it is listed as number one on IMDb.com's
list of the 250 top-rated films (Cabaret is not included
on either list). It's difficult to come up with a reason why "experts"
were so grudging in their appreciation of The Godfather when
it came out, but time has settled the injustices and the film is
now firmly settled in its place as one of the great works of art
in movie history.
Worst Award
Charles Chaplin's sublime Limelight was released in London in October of 1952 but when Chaplin returned to the United States after promoting it in his birth country, he was denied entry because of his alleged connections to the Communist party. Although the film had already been released in San Francisco and New York (where Chaplin was runner-up as Best Director and Best Actor at the New York Film Critics Awards) the year of its creation, the scandal cancelled its opening in Los Angeles and so it was ineligble for the 1953 Oscars. Limelight languished in a vault for twenty years and when the dust eventually settled in 1972, it was finally displayed in Tinseltown where it hailed as the masterpiece that it always was. The Academy determined that since it was ineligible for Oscars when it first came out, it would be in the running now and they made amends to Chaplin and his collaborators Ray Rasch and Larry Russell with a nomination for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score. Rasch and Russell had both died years previously so they were unmoved by the gesture but they and Chaplin ultimately won the award that had been denied them during the Red Scare (Chaplin's only Oscar win in a competitive category, although he had won special awards at the 1928 and 1971 ceremonies). Limelight ranks among Chaplin's greatest films and it would have deserved every award that was handed out in 1952 (Claire Bloom's star-making BAFTA-winning performance should have walked aways with the Supporting Actress Oscar) but honoring it twenty years later seems like a case of too little, too late and the Academy has since made such untimely shenigans against the rules.
Biggest Oversight
When
considering artists who were absurdly overlooked by the Academy
Awards, names like Charles Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Edward G, Robinson
invariably come up. But as integral to the list is cinematographer Gordon Willis, who was the name behind such gloriously photographed
films as The Landlord, Klute, The Paper Chase, The Godfather:
Part II, All the Presidents Men, Annie Hall, Interiors,
Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Manhattan,
receiving a total of zero nominations for that impressive roster.
But Willis must have known what he was up against when his landmark
work on The Godfather was overlooked, in a year when the
Academy chose to honor such conventionally photographed films as 1776, Butterflies are Free and Travels With My Aunt.
Willis finally received his first nomination for Zelig in
1983, and wasn't honored again until the Academy nominated what
was arguably his weakest effort, the lamentable Godfather Part
III.
The
Sting
Actor: Jack Lemmon (Save the Tiger)
Actress: Glenda Jackson (A Touch of Class) Supporting Actor: John Houseman (The Paper Chase) Supporting Actress: Tatum O'Neal (Paper Moon) Director: George Roy Hill (The Sting)
American
Graffiti
Actor: Marlon Brando (Last Tango in Paris)
Actress: Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were) Supporting Actor: Paul Le Mat (American Graffiti)* Supporting Actress: Candy Clark (American Graffiti) Director: George Lucas (American Graffiti)
The
Academy went Hollywood in 1973, awarding Oscars to big budget,
big profit bubblegum flicks like The Exorcist, A Touch
of Class, and the biggest and most enjoyable bubblelicious
funfest of all, The Sting. This Depression-era tale
of con men and their marks is a joy ride of cinematic delight,
served up flawlessly by the charming performances of Paul
Newman and Robert Redford, the fast-paced direction of George
Roy Hill, and the hairpin corner-turning script of David S.
Ward (who was unjustly accused of plagiarism for his wonderful
screenplay, a scandal that sadly derailed his career), and
cemented the trend for "Buddy" films started by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But as entertaining
a movie as The Sting is, it is not a film that engages
the emotions. It is diverting to see Redford and Newman outwit
the cartoonishly sleazy Robert Shaw, but we always are very
aware that the characters in the film are the slick creation
of Hollywood's Dream Factory, not relatable human beings.
Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker might have all the moxy and
guile that Ward's typewriter could muster, but they lack a
soul.
It's
ironic that the Oscars were a testament to such trifles, because
the year offered a wealth of soulful films about serious subjects
that continue to resonate in the collective heart. Cries
and Whispers, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Detail and Mean Streets were all powerful films (as opposed to the movies the Academy preferred this year) that are still
enthusiastically viewed and discussed by discriminating cinémeastes
despite their dismissal by the entertainment elite in their
year of release. But the most affecting and adult movie of
all is about a group of young people just on the cusp of adulthood,
ironically made by the biggest popcorn filmmaker of all. George
Lucas' American Graffiti is a tale of four recent high
school graduates cruising the streets on a summer night in
Modesto. Teenage audiences can relate to to the youthful soul-searching
that their screen archetypes go through, while adult viewers
know that the resolutions they come to are only the beginning
of the journey, not the end. Lucas has directed only six films
in his career, and with the exception of American Graffiti they have all been summer science fiction movies that are
firmly rooted in a teenage mentality. It was only when he
made a film about teenagers that Lucas ever showed
his adult side.
Worst Award
Melvyn
Douglas refused to show up to collect his 1979 Academy Award
for Being There because he thought it was ridiculous
that one of the nominees was eight year old Justin Henry in Kramer Vs. Kramer. Douglas had a point, because while
there have certainly been some magnificent performances by child
actors (Jackie Cooper in The Champ, Mary Badham in To
Kill a Mockingbird, Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense),
most preteen thespians achieve success only because of a skillful
director who is able to manipulate them in a way that is unnecessary
with experienced professional actors (Shirley Temple was the
outstanding exception). One of the best examples of this was Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, whose by-the-numbers
depiction of a precocious Depression-era junior con artist was
much more the product of Peter Bogdanovich's directorial abilities
than of the acting skills of a ten year old prodigy. What's
more, Tatum's role as Addie Loggins in unquestionably the largest
one in the film, giving her a decided advantage in the "Supporting"
Oscar race over actresses who actually were playing secondary
roles. After the success of Paper Moon, Tatum enjoyed
a brief vogue as a child star in films like The Bad News
Bears and Little Darlings before returning to the
anonymity she clearly deserved, with only an occasional television
appearance to immortalize the mediocre acting ability that she
always had.
Biggest Oversight
In Stardust Memories, Woody Allen lampooned his fans'
fondness for his "early, funny films" after his work
took a bittersweet turn with Annie Hall. But while these
youthful efforts are undisciplined and somewhat juvenile, they
offer an originality that was unique in Hollywood of the time.
Allen and Marshall Brickman's screenplay for Sleeper, while certainly suffering
from an anemic budget and Allen's immaturity as a director,
is far fresher and more inventive than the relatively conventional
scripts for Save the Tiger or A Touch of Class which
were nominated in its place. Despite the protests of comedy
purists, the Academy didn't take interest in Allen until his
work dealt with increasingly serious themes, ultimately nominating
him for more Oscars than any other writer and giving him the
award for Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters.
But his "early, funny films" continue to delight.
The
Godfather, Part II
Actor: Art Carney(Harry and Tonto)
Actress: Ellen Burstyn
(Alice Doesn't Live Here, Anymore) Supporting Actor: Robert DeNiro (The Godfather, Part II) Supporting Actress: Ingrid Bergman
(Murder on the Orient Express) Director:
Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Part II)
Chinatown
Actor: Jack Nicholson (Chinatown)
Actress: Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence) Supporting Actor: Robert DeNiro (The Godfather, Part II) Supporting Actress: Madeline Kahn
(Blazing Saddles) Director: Roman Polanski (Chinatown)
The
Academy may have been feeling a trifle guilty about giving
their top award to an empty-headed entertainment flick in
1973, so they turned around the following year and awarded
one that was stupefyingly somber. The success of The Godfather,
Part II came as something of a surprise on Oscar night,
as no sequel had ever won the big prize before (indeed the
only sequel that had received a nomination for Best Picture
was The Bells of St. Mary's in 1945, the film that
Michael Corleone had ironically just seen when he learned
of the assassination attempt on his father in the original).
And while the continuation of the Corleone saga won the Best
Director awards from the DGA and the National Society of Film
Critics, it was not named Best Picture by any other major
awards group prior to the Oscars. Still, it is a brilliantly
acted film (equaling its predecessor's mark of three nominations
for Best Supporting Actor for Lee Strasberg, Michael V. Gazzo
and winner Robert DeNiro; with comparably superior work by
the unnominated John Cazale and Robert Duvall) and a worthy
successor to its unforgettable first part, although Coppola
and Mario Puzo's Oscar winning screenplay takes the characters
from being spectacularly successful thugs in the original
to major players on the world political stage in the second,
a leap that does not always defy credibility.
1974
was a wonderful year for movies that saw classics like Young
Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles,
The Three Musketeers, and Scenes from a Marriage (which certainly would have been nominated for - and probably won - Best Actress for Liv Ullman if the film had not been declared ineligible because it had been shown on Swedish television prior to its theatrical release) bypassed for a Best Picture nomination in favor of the
powerhouses Lenny and The Conversation (the
selection of the potboiler The Towering Inferno for
the Best Picture final five can only be ascribed to the deep
pockets of 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., who co-produced
the film). But the 800 pound gorilla of 1974 was Roman Polanski's Chinatown, one of the seminal films of the decade and
arguably the greatest detective movie ever made. This spellbinding
tale of incest and intrigue centering around Los Angeles'
water crisis during the 1930s received only a single award,
for Robert Towne's masterpiece of a screenplay. In retrospect
it should have swept the awards, winning Best Picture, Best
Director for Polanski, Best Editing (over the inexplicable
win for The Towering Inferno), Best Art Direction,
and particularly Best Actor for Jack Nicholson, who turned
in the greatest performance of his blue chip career.
Worst Award
When Ingrid Bergman won Best Supporting Actress for Murder
On the Orient Express she spent her acceptance speech apologizing
to Valentina Cortese, who Bergman felt should have won for Day
for Night. It was a classy gesture (although insensitive
to the other nominees, who were equally deserving of the award),
especially as the brilliantly talented Bergman turned in one
of her least memorable performances as a "backwards"
missionary in the Agatha Christie whodunit; not even the best
supporting turn in the film (that honor surely belongs
to the pushy diva of Lauren Bacall) much less the movie year.
In less competitive years the Academy does like to turn the
supporting categories into testimonials for screen legends whose
performances might not be considered against stronger competition
(Helen Hayes in Airport, George Burns in The Sunshine
Boys, James Coburn in Affliction), but 1974 was a
watershed year in film acting, and to turn the award into a
sentimental tribute to Bergman (who had already won two Best
Actress prizes) showed extraordinarily poor timing on their
part.
Biggest Oversight
Art Carney’s selection as Best Actor for the relatively forgotten (and forgettable) gentle comedy Harry & Tonto was considered a major surprise on Oscar night, with the award being anticipated to go to Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. Carney had only won one other major award for the story of an elderly man who makes a cross-county journey with his pet cat, the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actor - Musical/Comedy. The fact that the other nominees in this category were Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in Billy Wilder's regrettable remake of The Front Page, James Earl Jones in Claudine and Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard was a good example of what a joke the Golden Globes were in this era, because they overlooked what is arguably the greatest comedy performance in the funniest film in the history of motion pictures: Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. Wilder’s snub by the Academy was a little less inexplicable than the Globes because he was bypassed for recognition by superb work by Nicholson, Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part II and Dustin Hoffman in Lenny; but to honor Carney (a marvelous stage and television actor who gave a splendid, though hardly award-worthy performance in Harry & Tonto and whose only other notable big screen appearance was in the 1977 comedy The Late Show) or fifth nominee Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express over Wilder’s unforgettably manic and hilarious characterization is an indication of how little regard the Academy has for broad comedy. Young Frankenstein was only nominated for two awards in this strong year, for Wilder and Mel Brooks’ one-of-a-kind screenplay (losing to The Godfather, Part II in an honorable, though debatable decision) and Best Sound. When looking at some of nominees in other categories, it is inconceivable to think what the Academy considered superior to this immortal classic: The Towering Inferno for Best Picture, John Cassavetes for A Woman Under the Influence over Brooks for Best Director, Jeff Bridges in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot over Marty Feldman or Peter Boyle for Best Supporting Actor, or the genuinely ludicrous selection of Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express over Cloris Leachman for Best Supporting Actress. Wilder was only nominated for one Oscar for acting, for his sublimely silly Leo Bloom in another Mel Brooks classic, The Producers. After his double-whammy in 1974 of Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles (another classic that was absurdly under-rewarded at the Oscars) Wilder fell into a lamentable period of auteurism; writing, directing and starring in such flops as The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975), The World's Greatest Lover (1977), and Haunted Honeymoon (1986) while the quality of Brooks’ films also went into decline as his acting roles got more and more prominent in them. But when Mel Brook and Gene Wilder were working together, they were a monster partnership.
One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Actor: Jack Nicholson
(One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
Actress: Louise Fletcher (One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) Supporting Actor: George Burns (The Sunshine Boys) Supporting Actress: Lee Grant (Shampoo) Director: Milos Foreman
(One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
The
Man Who Would Be King*
Actor: Jack Nicholson (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
Actress: Isabel Adjani (The Story of Adele H.) Supporting Actor: John Cazale (Dog Day Afternoon)* Supporting Actress: Louise
Fletcher
(One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)* Director: John Huston (The Man Who Would Be King)*
The
Academy continued with its Serious is Superior philosophy
in 1975, anointing the depressing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest as Best Picture, a powerful film that finds its charismatic
protagonist lobotomized and brutally suffocated by its end.
It boasts a stunning performance by Jack Nicholson (who finally
won the Oscar that had eluded him after a string of magnificent
performances that is equaled only by the masterful half decade
that jump-started Marlon Brando's film career), but is an
incredibly somber work whose ultimate descent into tragedy
and defeat is almost unbearable to watch. Three of the other
Best Picture nominees are almost as grim (Dog Day Afternoon,
Nashville and especially the breathtakingly beautiful
but stupefyingly boring Barry Lyndon), with only the
exciting blockbuster Jaws providing any entertainment
(its failure to win the Best Picture Award was the first time
that an all-time box office champ didn't win the prize, with
previous record blockbusters Gone With the Wind, The Sound
of Music and The Godfather all taking home the
Oscar).
Almost
completely overlooked in the nominations was John Huston's
brilliant and madly enjoyable film adaptation of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. Huston had attempted for
decades to get the project off the ground, originally as a
vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy and later for
Paul Newman. But good things are worth waiting for, and the
ultimate casting of Michael Caine and Sean Connery (and Christopher
Plummer [pictured] as Rudyard Kipling) is so perfect that
it seems inconceivable for any other actors to even be considered.
The Man Who Would Be King was nominated for a paltry
two awards (for art direction and Huston and Gladys Hill's
screenplay), doubtless because of the perception that such
an entertaining movie couldn't possibly have artistic merit
as well.
Worst Award
The
Academy recently considered doing away with their awards for
documentaries and short subjects, feeling that those categories
were obsolete in today's movie world. It is a good thing they
reconsidered, not only because such modest films benefit more
from Oscar recognition than the big budget features that is
the Academy's bread and butter, but because the makers of such
works (who invariably face bigger obstacles with a far smaller
payoff than your Steven Spielbergs or James Camerons) generally
give the most heartfelt and memorable acceptance speeches on
Awards Night. But the documentaries branch has been particularly
controversial in recent years, not only because they have bypassed
such highly-regarded films as The Thin Blue Line, Hoop Dreams,
Roger & Me and Crumb for nominations, but the
films they do honor are frequently regarded as inferior to others
in the running. Such was the case in 1975 when the Academy selected The Man Who Skied Down Everest as the year's best, a
monotonous film about Japanese skiier Yuichiro Miura's attempt
to ski down the summit of the title, most of which shows his
extensive preparation for the event and ends with him disastrously
tumbling down the side of the mountain. It is a sluggish film
(narrated by Douglas Rain, who provides the same dull monotone
that he gave to Hal, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey)
that raises some serious (and unanswered) questions about the
shallowness of the journey - six men died on the ascent just
for the sake of Miura's ski vacation. The film was hardly superior
to the other four nominees, especially Walter F. Parkes' and
Keith F. Critchlow's gripping account of members of the American
Nazi party, The California Reich.
Biggest Oversight
1975
was an appallingly weak year for movies, so it's stunning that
so many outstanding achievements were overlooked in the nominations.
Steven Spielberg was considered such a sure thing for his direction
of Jaws that a documentary crew filmed his witnessing
the announcement on television with the expectation of following
him along through the awards process, only to see him bypassed
in favor of inferior work by Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick.
John Cazale only appeared in five films in his career before
his untimely death from cancer, all of which were nominated
for Best Picture. Cazale was never nominated for his acting,
although his stellar performance as Al Pacino's partner in crime
in Dog Day Afternoon was one of the best of this weak
year. But the most outstanding oversight was the omission of The Man Who Would Be King in so many categories,
especially Best Picture, Best Director for John Huston, and
Best Actor for both Sean Connery and Michael Caine. In a stronger
year it might not have mattered, but when perusing some of the
films and performances that were selected (Barry Lyndon,
Nashville, Maximilian Schell in The Man in the Glass
Booth, James Whitmore in Give `em Hell, Harry!),
it seems a particularly curious snub.
Now
it seems inconceivable to think there was a time when Sylvester
Stallone was compared favorably to Marlon Brando, but that was precisely
the impact he had on critics with his sensitive performance as Rocky
Balboa. In the decades since, of course, Stallone has proved himself
to be a woefully inept actor whose star-making characterization
proved to be an aberration, with his leaden work on films like Stop!
Or My Mom Will Shoot, Rhinestone, Driven, Rambo, and Over
the Top proving to be a far better indication of his nonexistent
dramatic abilities. Still, he was excellent as Rocky, and the film
itself is an exciting, if somewhat manipulative diversion. Its spectacular,
unexpected success upon its release was due in no small part to
Stallone's brilliant marketing of himself as an underdog hero much
like the protagonist of the film (a far cry from his subsequent
career, in which he became famous for commanding massive upfront
fees for movie duds that failed to even make his salary back at
the box office). But based on its own merits, Rocky is little
more than a highly formulaic sports movie chalk-full of clichéd
characters with a 1940s sensibility. It is an entertaining movie,
but more for its familiarity than for offering anything original
to the history of film.
Original
is the only word for Network, which provided a spellbinding
blueprint for the future of network television that seemed nothing
short of apocalyptic in 1976. But in our current age of the Fox
network and reality television, the antics of Howard Beale and The
Mao Tse-tung Hour seem more like an inevitability than the cautionary
omen that screenwriter Paddy Chaevsky intended and has even more
relevance with each passing year. The film also provides a showcase
of brilliant performances, particularly a perfectly cast Faye Dunaway
(pictured) giving the finest performance of her career, although
the Oscars given to Peter Finch for his one-note secondary role
as Howard Beale and Beatrice Straight for her forgettable cameo
as William Holden's wife now seem like woefully bad selections for
standout recognition. But with wonderfully complex work by Holden
and Robert Duvall, an intelligent, clever screenplay by Chaevsky
and precision-perfect direction by Sidney Lumet that should have
finally won him the Oscar he had always been denied in his stellar
career, Network is a genuinely unique film and a far better
selection for the year's best.
Worst Award
Beatrice
Straight's Oscar-winning performance in Network offered
her only a little over five minutes of screen time, and with the
scene-stealing histrionics of William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter
Finch, Robert Duvall, and Ned Beatty going on around her, it's astonishing
that anyone even remembered her presence in the film, much less
voted it Oscar-worthy. Straight was a distinguished theatre actress
(she won a Tony for the original Broadway production of The Crucible)
and teacher who had the amazing good fortune to find herself cast
in a small, but juicy role in a popular prestige picture in an incredibly
weak year for female supporting roles; but even amongst such flimsy
competition Straight's glorified cameo never should have done more
than round out the field. Among her co-nominees, Piper Laurie in Carrie and Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver made far greatest
impact than Straight, but the omission of Lauren Bacall in her change-of-pace
role as a stern but compassionate widow in The Shootist,
the underrated valedictory to John Wayne's career, seems a particularly
glaring oversight in such a weak category.
Biggest Oversight
Lauren Bacall received a single Academy Award nomination during her long career, for the Barbra Streisand vanity project The Mirror Has Two Faces. This is a shame because while Bacall is primarily remembered today for her marriage to Humphrey Bogart, she was a wonderful actress who really came into her own in the 1970s. She started the decade by winning her first Tony Award as Margo Channing in the musical version of All About Eve, Applause (she would win a second Tony for Woman of the Year in 1981). She went on to be unjustly overlooked for Oscar recognition for two wonderful scene-stealing supporting roles, as a pushy diva in Murder on the Orient Express (1974, the best performance in the film despite costars Albert Finney receiving a nomination and Ingrid Bergman ludicrously being awarded the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress) and as John Wayne's stern but kind love interest in the valedictory to his Western career as an aging gunfighter dying of cancer, The Shootist. The film isn't perfect, featuring flat direction by Don Siegel and a cast of famous TV actors who are less identified by their characters than by the familiar faces playing them. But both Wayne (who should have received a Best Actor nomination over Giancarlo Giannini in Seven Beauties) and Bacall are at the top of the game and with the Academy handing out Oscars to five minute cameos, her omission seems outrageous.
Woody
Allen made his debut as a film writer/performer with 1965's What's New, Pussycat, and was never so much as considered
for an Academy Award for the string of madly enjoyable screenplays
and comic performances he supplied to films like The Front, Play It Again, Sam and Love and Death - films
that were admired, but not taken as seriously as such Oscar-approved
classics as Hello, Dolly!, Airport or Nicolas and
Alexandria. But with the release of the masterpiece Annie
Hall, he was suddenly hailed as one of the greatest filmmakers
in the history of cinema who could do no wrong, turning out
an almost nonstop string of unforgettable achievements like Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters,
Broadway Danny Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullets Over
Broadway and Radio Days. Then, just as suddenly,
Allen could do no right and his subsequent output - Celebrity,
Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Anything Else, Hollywood Ending,
Melinda and Melinda - weren't only not up to his usual
high standard, they were terrible. It's difficult to determine
how Allen's gifts so suddenly blossomed and how they equally
suddenly burned out, but it's safe to say that when he was
at his best, there was never a more unique voice in American
film. And it is a credit to the Academy that with such predictable
Best Picture offerings as Julia, The Turning Point and the blockbuster Star Wars available to choose from,
they selected a heartfelt little romantic comedy as the year's
best. Annie Hall was the first comedy selected as Best
Picture since the far more pretentious Tom Jones in
1963, but time has vindicated the selection as one of the
decades' best.
Worst Award
1977
was one of those rare years where the Academy's selections were
almost universally impeccable, and it's painful to have to pick
a "worst" among such fine choices. Richard Dreyfuss' performance as a struggling actor in Neil Simon's The Goodbye
Girl was actually a brilliant characterization, and certainly
worthy of the award - which made him at the time the youngest
winner of the Best Actor Award, and following a string of successes
like American Graffiti, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Jaws, one of the most exciting new talents in film.
But as good as Dreyfuss was in The Goodbye Girl, there
is no denying that he is somewhat mannered and has a tendency
to relish in his own cuteness in the romantic comedy. His Oscar
win was a surprise, as the award was expected to be the sentimental
choice of Richard Burton for his exceptional performance in
the flawed but wonderfully acted film version of the play Equus.
But the performance of the year was actually the young John
Travolta, whose astonishing work as Tony Manero in Saturday
Night Fever capitulated him to the top level of stardom
with blockbusters like Grease and Urban Cowboy to follow. Both Dreyfuss and Travolta were in their twenties
at the time of their professional surge and seemed unable to
handle its pressure as their careers took nose-dives after their
initial success and required a major comeback film (Dreyfuss
in Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Travolta in Pulp
Fiction) to put them back on track. Of the two, Dreyfuss
has had by far the more distinguished acting career on both
stage and film, but 1977 belonged to Travolta.
Biggest Oversight
The
Oscars were slow to warm up to the influence of popular music
in the 1970s, and while The Beatles and Isaac Hayes were awarded
statuettes during the decade, nominations usually went to members
of the old guard like Henry Mancini and Burt Bacharach. The
Academy showed their most blatant disregard towards Pop by snubbing
the Bee Gees' song score for Saturday Night Fever in 1977, not only the best selling album of the decade but the
best use of popular songs to set the atmosphere of a film since The Graduate. It's impossible to fault the selection
of the mega-smash "You Light Up My Life" as Best Song,
but for the Academy to say that forgotten nominees like "Candle
on the Water," "Someone's Waiting For You" or
"The Slipper and the Rose Waltz" were better songs
or had a greater impact on the films in which they were created
for than "Stayin' Alive" is enough to suggest that
there was a conspiracy against the Disco movement by the Academy.
Not such a bad idea in retrospect, but certainly not in keeping
with the ideals that the Best Song Oscar is supposed to represent.
The
Deer Hunter
Actor: Jon Voight (Coming Home)
Actress: Jane Fonda (Coming Home) Supporting Actor: Christopher Walken
(The Deer Hunter) Supporting Actress: Maggie Smith (California Suite) Director: Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter)
Coming
Home
Actor: Jon Voight (Coming Home)
Actress: Ingrid Bergman (Autumn Sonata) Supporting Actor: John Hurt (Midnight Express) Supporting Actress: Maggie Smith (California Suite) Director: Ingmar Bergman (Autumn Sonata)*
1978
may be the worst year in movie history, with the only
truly memorable Hollywood release being the grandaddy of all
teenage gross-out comedies, National Lampoon's Animal House.
In the Oscar race, the battle was between the first two major
studio release to deal with the Vietnam War, The Deer Hunter and Coming Home (a third Vietnam-themed film, Go
Tell the Spartans, was also released that year - which
made no impact in the Oscar race despite being more highly
praised in some quarters than the two Award winners). Both
films give the war the Hollywood treatment - Coming Home is a highly romantic love triangle centering around a handsome
paraplegic war veteran whose sexual performance is strangely
unaffected by his injuries, while The Deer Hunter takes
shocking liberties with the facts, showing the American POWs
being forced to play Russian Roulette for the amusement of
their captors - a completely fictional device which depicts
the Viet Cong as nothing more than subhuman barbarians and
reduces The Deer Hunter into as much of a propaganda
film as The Green Berets. This wouldn't matter if The
Deer Hunter was the powerful statement on the war that
it presents itself as, but the film is a decidedly mixed bag, juxtaposing astonishingly powerful sequences with stupifyingly boring ones. Coming Home is anything but boring - no
less a glamorous soap opera than Peyton Place, it boasts
powerful performances by Jon Voight, Jane Fonda and Bruce
Dern and makes a brave stab at enacting the struggles real
life veterans faced on their return home. It falls far short of its goal of being the Best Years of Our Lives for the Vietname era and in another year,
a slick melodrama like Coming Home would have to battle
for a nomination. But in the abyss of 1978, it was the best
that Movieland had to offer.
Worst Award
No
film career has undergone the staggering highs and lows of Michael
Cimino. After winning universal praise and the Academy Award
for The Deer Hunter, he quickly plunged himself into
the legendary depths of Heavens Gate, a financial disaster
of epic proportion that ended his brief stint as a major player
in Hollywood. In retrospect, neither extreme seems fair. While Heavens Gate never found its audience (to put it mildly),
it is a highly watchable film that some overzealous fans have
vainly tried to award the mantle of "classic" to counterbalance
its infamous reputation. But his critical zenith for The
Deer Hunter is equally undeserved, as it is a leaden-paced
borethon that received undue praise because it had the gimmick
of being ostensibly set within the context of the Vietnam War.
With the inventive work of Waldo Salt for Coming Home,
Alan Parker for Midnight Express and Woody Allen for Interiors in the running (and the great Ingmar Bergman being
overlooked), Cimino's bust in the Oscar Hall of Fame now seems
strangely out of place.
Biggest Oversight
With
the dearth of quality films released this year, the Oscars recognized
more films of dubious quality than usual. This was especially
apparent with the nine nominations for Heaven Can Wait,
a humdrum remake of the 1943 classic Here Comes Mr. Jordan that netted nominations for Warren Beatty in the Best Picture,
Actor, Screenplay (with Elaine May) and Director (with Buck
Henry) categories, tying the record set by Orson Welles in 1941.
Beatty's recognition for such a mediocre entry can only be ascribed
to his marketing genius and the fact that competition was so
scarce in this weak year. But on closer examination, it seems
astonishing that Beatty received his Best Director nomination
over one of the greatest filmmakers ever - some would say the greatest - who produced one of his finest films. The great actress
Ingrid Bergman made headlines in 1978 by making her return to
Swedish film in Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata,
a devastating drama about a famed concert pianist coming to
grips with her estranged relationship with her daughter (brilliantly
played by Liv Ullman). This magnificent adult drama was nominated
Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay for the two Bergmans,
but not for Ullman or for Bergman's compelling direction. In
a stronger year the omission might have been written off to
the Academy's prejudice against foreign language films, but
to say that the Beatty/Henry tandem or Michael Cimino did a
better job of direction than the great master Bergman indicates
an ignorance that is nothing short of astounding.
Kramer
Vs. Kramer
Actor: Dustin Hoffman (Kramer Vs. Kramer)
Actress: Sally Field (Norma Rae) Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas (Being There) Supporting Actress: Meryl Streep
(Kramer Vs. Kramer) Director: Robert Benton (Kramer Vs. Kramer)
Manhattan*
Actor: Peter Sellers (Being There)
Actress: Sally Field (Norma Rae) Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas (Being There) Supporting Actress: Meryl Streep
(Kramer Vs. Kramer) Director: Woody Allen (Manhattan)*
Kramer
Vs. Kramer was the overwhelming favorite for Best Picture
in 1979, winning not only the Academy Award but being anointed
by most of the other year-end movie awards as well. The film
is a well-acted, diverting melodrama about a father trying
to retain custody of his son (played by eight year old Justin
Henry, who ludicrously received a Best Supporting Actor nomination
over performances like Laurence Olivier in A Little Romance,
Michael Murphy for Manhattan, Ron Leibman in Norma
Rae and Paul Dooley in Breaking Away) after the
boy's mother walks out on them. It is an engaging but highly
conventional film that seems more important than it is because
of the big name talent involved. In fact Kramer Vs. Kramer has a highly offensive aspect to it, as Hoffman's character
is virtually deified in the film for assuming challenges that
countless single mothers go through on a daily basis. But
if Kramer Vs. Kramer had simply switched genders and
been about a single mother trying to raise her son after the
father walked out, there would have been no film because the
premise would have been too commonplace to hold our interest.
1979
deserved a better Best Picture than this, and there were some
astonishingly challenging films in the running that the Academy
overlooked in favor of the ultra-safe Kramer Vs. Kramer.
All four of the other nominees for Best Picture now seem stronger
choices - All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away and Norma Rae - and are vastly more courageous and powerful
creations than the slick Kramer Vs. Kramer. None are
perfect - the front-runner today would probably be Francis
Coppola's Vietnam allegory Apocalypse Now - which for
all its pictorial splendor is a pretentious muddle that doesn't
seem connected with the real war in Vietnam in any way (it
could easily have been set in World War II without missing
a beat). The
finest and most cohesive film of the year was Woody Allen's Manhattan, a brilliant drama about neurotic, self-involved
New York intellectual elite. The film received the Best Director
citation at the New York Film Critics Awards but received
scant attention at the Oscars, receiving only two nominations
for Screenplay Written for the Screen and Mariel Hemingway
as Best Supporting Actress.
Worst Award
The
Academy's devotion towards the formulaic Kramer Vs. Kramer seems puzzling in any year, but with so many fine entries
in the running it seems nothing short of cowardly. Both All
That Jazz and Apocalypse Now, while certainly highly
flawed films, were much more courageous in following their filmmaker's
personal visions than the conventional Oscar winner. Breaking Away and Norma Rae were far more honest
than Kramer Vs. Kramer, whose convenient ending that
depicts the mother returning the boy to the custody of his father
after winning it in court seems tacked on simply to supply us
with a happy ending. And non-nominees Being There and Manhattan were both more highly original than then Academy's
choice, whose predictable structure held no surprises for the
viewer. Kramer Vs. Kramer is a fine film for what it
is, but it wasn't the best picture of 1979 or any other year.
Biggest Oversight
The
most surprising category was cinematography, with breathtaking
work by Caleb Deschenel for The Black Stallion and especially
perennial snub Gordon Willis for Manhattan being
bypassed in favor of the forgettable photography of Kramer
Vs. Kramer and The Black Hole. Woody Allen's seminal
work received only two nominations (for Mariel Hemingway's supporting
performance and its screenplay) in a year that it should have
dominated, with awards for Best Picture, Director and Original
Screenplay, and nominations for Art Direction, Best Supporting
Actor for Michael Murphy and Best Actress for Diane Keaton.
But the outstanding distinction of the film was Willis' cinematography,
and his bold work on Manhattan signaled a brief renaissance
of black and white photography and which was surely the most
courageous film achievement of 1979, in addition to being the
best.
BEST PICTURE *Little Big Man Five Easy Pieces
Fellini Satyricon
I Never Sang for My Father
Patton
BEST DIRECTOR *Arthur Penn for Little Big Man
Federico Fellini for Fellini Satyricon
Bob Rafelson for Five Easy Pieces
Ken Russell for Women in Love
Franklin J. Schaffner for Patton
BEST ACTOR *George C. Scott in Patton
Melvyn Douglas in I Never Sang for My Father
Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man
James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope
Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces
BEST ACTRESS *Glenda Jackson in Women in Love
Jane Alexander in The Great White Hope
Sandy Dennis in The Out-Of-Towners
Ali MacGraw in Love Story
Carrie Snodgrass in Diary of a Mad Housewife
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Chief Dan George in Little Big Man
Richard Castellano in Lovers and Other Strangers
Trevor Howard in Ryan's Daughter
Frank Langella in Diary of a Mad Housewife
Jon Voight in Catch-22
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces
Faye Dunaway in Little Big Man
Lee Grant in The Landlord
Sally Kellerman in M*A*S*H
Jeannie Linden in Women in Love
BEST PICTURE *The Last Picture Show A Clockwork Orange
The Conformist
Fiddler on the Roof
The French Connection
BEST DIRECTOR *Peter Bogdanovich for The Last Picture Show
Bernardo Bertolucci for The Conformist
William Friedkin for The French Connection
Norman Jewison for Fiddler on the Roof
Stanley Kubrick for A Clockwork Orange
BEST ACTOR *Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange
Peter Finch in Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Gene Hackman in The French Connection
George C. Scott in The Hospital
Topol in Fiddler on the Roof
BEST ACTRESS *Jane Fonda in Klute
Julie Christie in McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude
Glenda Jackson in Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show Tom Baker in Nicolas and Alexandra
Jeff Bridges in The Last Picture Show
Art Garfunkel in Carnal Knowledge
Roy Scheider in The French Connection
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show
Ellen Burstyn in The Last Picture Show
Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge Vivien Pickles in Harold and Maude
Diana Rigg in The Hospital
BEST PICTURE *The Godfather Cabaret
Deliverance
Play It Again, Sam
Sounder
BEST DIRECTOR *Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather
John Boorman for Deliverance
Bob Fosse for Cabaret
Joseph L. Mankiewicz for Sleuth
Herbert Ross for Play It Again, Sam
BEST ACTOR *Al Pacino in The Godfather
Marlon Brando in The Godfather
Michael Caine in Sleuth
Laurence Olivier in Sleuth
Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class
BEST ACTRESS *Liza Minnelli in Cabaret
Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues
Maggie Smith in Travels with My Aunt
Cicely Tyson in Sounder
Liv Ullman in The Emigrants
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *James Caan in The Godfather
Eddie Albert in The Heartbreak Kid
Richard Castellano in The Godfather
Robert Duvall in The Godfather
Joel Grey in Cabaret
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Ida Lupino in Junior Bonner
Jeannie Berlin in The Heartbreak Kid
Diane Keaton in Play It Again, Sam
Geraldine Page in Pete n' Tillie
Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure
BEST PICTURE *American Graffitti Cries and Whispers
The Exorcist
Last Tango in Paris
The Sting
BEST DIRECTOR *George Lucas for American Graffitti
Ingmar Bergman for Cries and Whispers
Bernardo Bertolucci for Last Tango in Paris
William Friedkin for The Exorcist
George Roy Hill for The Sting
BEST ACTOR *Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris
Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger
Jason Miller in The Exorcist
Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail
Al Pacino in Serpico
BEST ACTRESS *Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty
Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class
Liv Ullman in Cries and Whispers
Joanne Woodward in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Paul Le Mat in American Graffitti
Jack Gilford in Save the Tiger
John Houseman in The Paper Chase
Max von Sydow in The Exorcist
Randy Quaid in The Last Detail
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Candy Clark in American Graffitti
Harriet Andersson in Cries and Whispers
Linda Blair in The Exorcist
Madeline Kahn in Paper Moon
Sylvia Sidney in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
BEST PICTURE *Chinatown The Conversation
The Godafther, Part II
Lenny
Young Frankenstein
BEST DIRECTOR *Roman Polanski for Chinatown
John Cassavetes for A Woman Under the Influence
Francis Ford Coppola for The Godafther, Part II
Bob Fosse for Lenny
Mel Brooks for Young Frankenstein
BEST ACTOR *Jack Nicholson in Chinatown
Gene Hackman in The Conversation
Dustin Hoffman in Lenny
Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part II
Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein
BEST ACTRESS *Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence
Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Diahann Carroll
in Claudine
Faye Dunaway in Chinatown
Valerie Perrine in Lenny
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Robert DeNiro in The Godfather, Part II
Eddie Albert in The Longest Yard Charles Boyer in Stavisky
Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein
Lee Strasberg in The Godfather, Part II
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles
Lauren Bacall in Murder on the Orient Express
Valentina Cortese in Day for Night
Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein
Talia Shire in The Godfather, Part II
BEST PICTURE *The Man Who Would Be King Amarcord
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
BEST DIRECTOR *John Huston for The Man Who Would Be King Federico Fellini for Amarcord Milos Foreman for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Sidney Lumet for Dog Day Afternoon
Steven Spielberg for Jaws
BEST ACTOR *Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King
Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King
Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws
Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon
BEST ACTRESS *Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adele H.
Karen Black in Day of the Locust
Faye Dunaway in The Four Musketeers
Goldie Hawn in Shampoo
Glenda Jackson in Hedda
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *John Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon George Burns in The Sunshine Boys
Bard Douriff in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Henry Gibson in Nashville
Burgess Meredith in Day of the Locust
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ronee Blakely in Nashville
Lee Grant in Shampoo
Lily Tomlin in Nashville
Brenda Vaccaro for Once is Not Enough
BEST PICTURE *Network All the President's Men
Bound for Glory
Rocky
Taxi Driver
BEST DIRECTOR * Sidney Lumet for Network
John G. Avildsen for Rocky
Ingmar Berman for Face to Face
Alan J. Pakula for All the President's Men
Martin Scorsese for Taxi Driver
BEST ACTOR *William Holden in Network
Woody Allen in The Front
Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver
Sylvestor Stallone in Rocky
John Wayne in The Shootist
BEST ACTRESS *Faye Dunaway in Network
Marie-Christine Barrault in Cousin, Cousine
Talia Shire in Rocky
Sissy Spacek in Carrie
Liv Ullman in Face to Face
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Jason Robards in All the President's Men
Peter Finch in Network Burgess Meredith in Rocky
Zero Mostel in The Front
Burt Young in Rocky
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Lauren Bacall in The Shootist
Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver
Lee Grant in Voyage of the Damned
Piper Laurie in Carrie
Kathering Ross in Voyage of the Damned
BEST PICTURE *Annie Hall Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Goodbye Girl
Star Wars
The Turning Point
BEST DIRECTOR *Woody Allen for Annie Hall
George Lucas for Star Wars
Herbert Ross for The Turning Point
Steven Spilberg for Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Fred Zinnemann for Julia
BEST ACTOR *John Tavolta in Saturday Night Fever
Woody Allen in Annie Hall
Richard Burton in Equus
Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl
John Gielgud in Providence
BEST ACTRESS *Diane Keaton in Annie Hall
Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point
Jane Fonda in Julia
Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point
Marsha Mason in The Goodbye Girl
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Peter Firth in Equus
Mikhail Baryshnikov in The Turning Point
Bill Macy in The Late Show
Jason Robards in Julia
Maximilian Schell in Julia
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Vanessa Redgrave in Julia
Joan Blondell in Closing Night
Melinda Dillon in Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Donna Pescow in Saturday Night Fever
Tuesday Weld in Looking for Mr. Goodbar
BEST PICTURE *Coming Home Autumn Sonata
Days of Heaven
The Deer Hunter
Midnight Express
BEST DIRECTOR *Ingmar Bergman for Autumn Sonata Hal Ashby for Coming Home Michael Cimino for The Deer Hunter Terence Malick for Days of Heaven
Alan Parker for Midnight Express
BEST ACTOR *Jon Voight in Coming Home
Gary Busey in The Buddy Holly Story
Robert DeNiro in The Deer Hunter
Laurence Olivier in The Boys from Brazil
Gregory Peck in The Boys from Brazil
BEST ACTRESS *Ingrid Bergman in Autumn Sonata
Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year
Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman
Jane Fonda in Coming Home
Liv Ullman in Autumn Sonata
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *John Hurt in Midnight Express
Bruce Dern in Coming Home
Richard Farnsworth in Comes a Horseman
Robert Morely in Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Maggie Smith in California Suite
Dyan Cannon in Heaven Can Wait
Penelope Milford in Coming Home
Maureen Stapleton in Interiors
Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter
BEST PICTURE *Manhattan All That Jazz
Apocalypse Now
Being There
Kraner vs. Kramer
BEST DIRECTOR *Woody Allen for Manhattan
Hal Ashby for Being There
Francis Coppola for Apocalypse Now
Bob Fosse for All That Jazz
Ridley Scott for Alien
BEST ACTOR *Peter Sellers in Being There
Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer
Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome
Al Pacini in ...and Justice for All
Roy Scheider in All That Jazz
BEST ACTRESS *Sally Field in Norma Rae
Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome
Shirley MacLaine in Being There
Bette Midler in The Rose
Sigourney Weaver in Alien
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR *Melvyn Douglas in Being There
Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now
Michael Murphy in Manhattan
Laurence Olivier in A Little Romance
Mickey Rooney in The Black Stallion
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS *Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer Barbara Barrie in Breaking Away
Candice Bergen in Starting Over
Valerie Harper in Chapter Two
Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan