1961 Alternate Oscars

My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

If I were playing by my own rules — nominating Hollywood movies in the year they were Oscar eligible; foreign movies (including British movies) in the year they were released in their home country — I would have nominated Sophia Loren for best actress last year, in 1960. But she actually won the Oscar for best actress in 1961, the first time an actor or an actress in a foreign-language film won a competitive Oscar. To avoid confusion, I put her here.

Do I promise to be consistent about it? Only when it suits me.

Look, the real point of this exercise is to create a God's-eye view of the history of movies — what was going on at a particular moment, who was influencing what — rather than an Academy-eye view of what the marketplace deemed worthy of releasing in Los Angeles in a given year. Which is tough to pull off because I'm not God. But as the man said, I gotta model myself after someone.