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Having lived through 1984 in real time, I remember there being three obvious choices for the best picture award come Oscar time—Amadeus, A Passage to India and The Killing Fields. For me at least, none of them have really held up on repeat viewings.
Amadeus is the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his chief musical rival, Salieri. I hope to God you know who Mozart was and assuming you do, you know the music in this is sublime. But in terms of narrative, both Mozart and Salieri are reduced to cartoon characters—the gifted idiot and his Snidely Whiplash nemesis—that become progressively less interesting (to me) the second time around.
A Passage to India was one of those sumptuous David Lean cinematography-fests that packed ninety minutes of story into nearly three hours worth of running time. The acting is uniformly brilliant and the pictures are pretty, but Lean seemed to have learned all the wrong lessons from his masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia. After starting out as a director of spritely adaptations of Charles Dickens novels (Great Expectations from 1946 is probably the best film based on Dickens ever), Lean became more and more long-winded and by the time he got to 1984, his story-telling had become completely ossified. This was his last movie.
Finally, The Killing Fields was Roland Joffé's take on the fall of Cambodia after the VietNam War and Pol Pot’s subsequent reign of terror that left as many as three million of his own citizens dead. The resulting film is a heartfelt if one-sided history lesson with a horror show in the middle. Granted, U.S. foreign policy in southeast Asia during the early 1970s was a mess, and what happened in Cambodia is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century, but unless you're in the mood to grind this particular axe for two hours—which I'm not—I can't recommend seeing The Killing Fields more than once.
Instead, I'm going with a couple of crowd-pleasers, The Terminator and This is Spinal Tap, which for all their low-budget limitations, are very nearly perfect and have entered the popular consciousness in way those other three films haven't.
The former was James Cameron's low-budget sci-fi film about a spunky waitress and the robot sent back from the future to kill her. What at first blush looked like the makings of a cheesy B-picture thriller turned out to be a moving love story, a tautly-told action picture and an interesting think-piece. It was also the beginning of a lucrative film franchise and was a career-maker for bodybuilder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. True, its selection means I've handed a top prize to a science fiction film for the third time in eight years (four, if you count Raiders of the Lost Ark), which seems like a lot to me, but the late 1970s to the early 1990s was a golden age for science fiction on film, what with the Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, Indiana Jones and Terminator franchises in full swing. Like choosing screwball comedies in the 1930s, you gotta go with what's available.
(By the way, whenever I see The Terminator, I think what a pity that director James Cameron ever became so successful that he was allowed to work with unlimited budgets. Like many artists, limits forced Cameron to think creatively to realize the vision in his head. Without limits, his films have become increasingly bloated, obvious and, for me at least, much less interesting. But I digress.)
The best comedy, This is Spinal Tap, was Rob Reiner's hilarious mockumentary about a fading heavy metal band. Not only is it choke-on-your-own-breath funny, it also spawned an entire genre, both Christopher Guest mockumentaries and such television shows as The Office and Modern Family. Stuff like this never seems to win any awards, but it's won legions of loyal fans over the intervening decades. Count me among them.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Terminator (prod. Gale Anne Hurd)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: This Is Spinal Tap (prod. Karen Murphy)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Un dimanche à la campagne (A Sunday in the Country) (prod. Bertrand Tavernier)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Harry Dean Stanton (Repo Man and Paris, Texas)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Steve Martin (All of Me)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Judy Davis (A Passage to India)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Kathleen Turner (Romancing The Stone)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: James Cameron (The Terminator)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Rob Reiner (This Is Spinal Tap)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: M. Emmet Walsh (Blood Simple)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Peggy Ashcroft (A Passage to India)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Rob Reiner (This Is Spinal Tap)
"Oh, Mr. Buñuel! I had a nice idea for a movie for you."
"Yes?"
"Yeah. A group of people attend a very formal dinner party and at the end of dinner when they try to leave the room, they can't."
"Why not?"
"They just can't seem to exit the door."
"But why?"
"Well, momento. When they're forced to stay together, the veneer of civilization quickly fades away and what they're left with is who they really are—animals."
"But I don't get it. Why don't they just walk out of the room?"
"All I'm saying is just think about it. Who knows—maybe when you're shaving one day, it'll tickle your fancy."
—Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) to Luis Buñuel (Adrien de Van) in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.
Maybe there was something in the water that year, but 1962 was a great one for movies. And not just any movies, but a group of movies that taken separately or together represent the most jaundiced view of humanity ever to sell a sackful of tickets. Lawrence of Arabia, The Manchurian Candidate, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita, Ride the High Country and even The Music Man with its con-man hero, consistently showed human beings at their greedy, violent, lying worst with very little hope that as a species, we'll ever evolve into anything better.
The bleakest—and funniest—of the year's films was Luis Buñuel's black comedy The Exterminating Angel, about a group of aristocrats who attend a dinner party then for reasons straight out of the Twilight Zone find themselves unable to leave. Buñuel isn't just saying that civilization is a thin veneer easily cracked apart in stressful times, he's saying that civilization is an illusion we have faith in only because we're habituated to the inhuman behavior of ourselves and our fellow inmates in the asylum of life, a fact we only occasionally notice when circumstances are so out of the ordinary that they throw our actions into stark relief.
Or to put it another way, we're just big animals with clothes on.
Too harsh? Well, maybe, but then maybe you didn't read the day's headlines. Which day's? Any day's.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Lawrence Of Arabia (prod. Sam Spiegel)
nominees: To Kill A Mockingbird (prod. Alan J. Pakula); The Longest Day (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (prod. Willis Goldbeck and John Ford); The Manchurian Candidate (prod. George Axelrod and John Frankenheimer); Ride The High Country (prod. Richard E. Lyons); What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (prod. Robert Aldrich)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Music Man (prod. Morton DaCosta)
nominees: Gypsy (prod. Mervyn LeRoy); Lolita (prod. James B. Harris)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (prod. Gustavo Alatriste)
nominees: L'eclisse (prod. Raymond Hakim and Robert Hakim); Jules et Jim (prod. François Truffaut); Sanma no aji (An Autumn Afternoon) (prod. Shizuo Yamanouchi); Seppuku (Harakiri) (prod. Tatsuo Hosoya); Il sorpasso (The Easy Life) (prod. Mario Cecchi Gori); Tsubaki Sanjûrô (Sanjuro) (prod. Ryûzô Kikushima and Tomoyuki Tanaka); Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Vivre Sa Vie) (prod. Pierre Braunberger)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Peter O'Toole (Lawrence Of Arabia)
nominees: Kirk Douglas (Lonely Are the Brave); Burt Lancaster (Birdman of Alcatraz); Jack Lemmon (Days of Wine and Roses); Joel McCrea (Ride the High Country); Robert Mitchum (Cape Fear); Tatsuya Nakadai (Seppuku a.k.a Harakiri); Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird); Randolph Scott (Ride the High Country); Frank Sinatra (The Manchurian Candidate)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Robert Preston (The Music Man)
nominees: Dirk Bogarde (The Password Is Courage); James Mason (Lolita); Toshirô Mifune (Tsubaki Sanjûrô a.k.a. Sanjuro)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim)
nominees: Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker); Bette Davis (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?); Katharine Hepburn (Long Day's Journey Into Night); Geraldine Page (Sweet Bird of Youth)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Shelley Winters (Lolita)
nominees: Shirley Jones (The Music Man); Corinne Marchand (Cléo de 5 à 7 a.k.a. Cleo From 5 To 7); Rosalind Russell (Gypsy); Natalie Wood (Gypsy)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: David Lean (Lawrence Of Arabia)
nominees: Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?); John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); John Frankenheimer (Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate); Masaki Kobayashi (Seppuku a.k.a Harakiri); Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird); Yasujirô Ozu (Sanma no aji a.k.a. An Autumn Afternoon); Sam Peckinpah (Ride The High Country); François Truffaut (Jules et Jim)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Luis Buñuel (El ángel exterminador a.k.a. The Exterminating Angel)
nominees: Morton DaCosta (The Music Man); Mervyn LeRoy (Gypsy); Stanley Kubrick (Lolita); Akira Kurosawa (Tsubaki Sanjûrô a.k.a. Sanjuro); Dino Risi (Il sorpasso a.k.a. The Easy Life)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Omar Sharif (Lawrence Of Arabia)
nominees: Ed Begley (Sweet Bird of Youth); Victor Buono (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?); Khigh Dhiegh (The Manchurian Candidate); Paul Ford (The Music Man); Laurence Harvey (The Manchurian Candidate); Lee Marvin (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); Robert Ryan (Billy Budd); Peter Sellers (Lolita); Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz); John Wayne (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate)
nominees: Mary Badham (To Kill A Mockingbird); Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker); Hermione Gingold (The Music Man); Mariette Hartley (Ride The High Country); Janet Leigh (The Manchurian Candidate)
SCREENPLAY
winner: George Axelrod, from the novel by Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate)
nominees: Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, from the writings of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence Of Arabia); James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck, from the story by Dorothy M. Johnson (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance); Horton Foote, from the novel by Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Anne V. Coates (Lawrence Of Arabia) (Film Editing); Freddie Young (Lawrence Of Arabia) (Cinematography); Maurice Jarre (Lawrence Of Arabia) (Score); La Jetée (Short)
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