WHETHER you’re rooting for “A Beautiful Mind,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” or one of the other Best Picture nominees Sunday night, don’t despair if your favorite loses.
The truth is, more often than not, Oscar makes mistakes.
The Academy’s 75-year history is filled with bloopers – some quite spectacular – that seem incomprehensible to even the most casual movie fan.
Would you rather see “Chariots of Fire,” the dreary, mercifully forgotten winner of the 1981 race – or “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?
More to the point, does anyone still not believe that “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” is a more lasting achievement than the lumbering historical epic than won the following year, “Gandhi”?
At least “E.T.” – a victim of the Academy’s bias against effects-laden movies (until 1997’s “Titanic,” that is) – was nominated.
The honor roll of classics not nominated for Best Picture includes “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Searchers,” “North by Northwest” and countless seminal comedies.
Consider the great “King Kong,” which didn’t even make it into the 1933 Best Picture race.
That one was won by “Cavalcade,” a stiff historical pageant based on a Noel Coward play that many experts consider Oscar’s absolute nadir.
It’s rivaled as Oscar’s all-time worst only by the insipid travelogue “Around the World in 80 Days,” which beat out “Giant” and “The Ten Commandments” for the 1956 award.
Forty years later, fans were scratching their heads when the widely detested “The English Patient,” a historical soap opera that goes on forever, somehow beat out “Fargo” and “Jerry Maguire.”
Given a choice between a dull but worthy costume picture – say, “Out of Africa,” the 1985 winner – and something more cutting-edge (“Prizzi’s Honor” and “The Curse of the Spider Woman” were also contenders in ’85), the Academy almost always goes for the less interesting choice.
In other cases, we can blame aggressive Oscar campaigns waged by studios.
That was certainly true of “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), a charming piece of Elizabethan fluff that shot down the more substantive “Saving Private Ryan.”
And politics often plays a role.
The most notorious case came in the 1952 awards, when the classic “High Noon” was victimized by blacklist-era sentiments in favor of the surprise winner, Cecil B. DeMille’s mediocre circus adventure, “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Three of the biggest embarrassments in recent years – both involving pictures directed by Martin Scorsese – came when the Academy handed out Best Picture statues to films now gathering dust on video-rental shelves.
Robert Redford’s unbearably earnest “Ordinary People” triumphed over the exhilarating “Raging Bull” at the 1980 awards.
Even more egregiously, “Goodfellas” lost to Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” a decade later.
Not that Marty should have been surprised.
Another of his acclaimed works, “Taxi Driver,” had its clock cleaned by “Rocky” at the 1976 Oscars.
——–
THESE FILMS WON …
“SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE”
“THE ENGLISH PATIENT”
“DANCES WITH WOLVES”
“GANDHI”
“ROCKY”
“OUT OF AFRICA”
… THESE SHOULD HAVE WON
“FARGO”
“TAXI DRIVER”
“E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL”
“SAVING PRIVATE RYAN”
“RAGING BULL”
“SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN”
