Steven Spielberg won the Oscar for directing Schindler's List in 1993. No great surprise — it's a terrific movie, one of the best of all time.
The shocker is that even though by that time he'd already directed Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun and Jurassic Park (also in 1993), the Oscar for Schindler's List was Spielberg's first.
What did the Academy think he'd been doing for twenty years? Peeling potatoes?
Spielberg's Oscar reminds me of Christopher Nolan's for Oppenheimer — well deserved but also a bit condescending. Hollywood is loathe to give Oscars to talented directors who rake in boatloads of money making entertaining movies (see, e.g., Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Quentin Tarantino and Greta Gerwig), at least not until they make one so serious and respectable, the voters just have to say, Ah, good boy, finally made something worthwhile!
Well, screw you, pal. As Randy Newman said when he finally won an Oscar after 16 nominations, "I don't need your pity!"
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I saw The Big Lebowski in Paris during a freakishly unseasonable heat wave in 1998. Along with the Cinema Astro in Florence, Italy, any theater in Paris is the best venue for watching a movie anywhere in the world.
By the way, the French call all those ads and previews before the feature film starts the "séance"—a term Katie and I still use. They are (or at least were) also adverse to translating heavy-duty swearing into the French subtitles, preferring the all-purpose "merde," the explanation being that to see anything stronger in print on the screen would be too shocking for the audience. Which may or may not be true, but certainly it meant that the non-English speakers in the audience missed out on the rather delightful tapestry of profanity that made The Big Lebowski such a great film.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Saving Private Ryan (prod. Steven Spielberg, Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon and Gary Levinsohn)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:Shakespeare in Love (prod. David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Edward Zwick and Marc Norman) Must-See Comedy/Musical:
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Central do Brasil (Central Station) (prod. Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Arthur Cohn, Robert Redford and Walter Salles)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Ian McKellen (Gods and Monsters)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski)
Except in terms of their uniform excellence, Jurassic Park and Schindler's List are about as different from each other as any two movies can be. That they were both directed by the same man in the same calendar year—indeed Spielberg was editing the former in the evenings while directing the latter during the day—is extraordinary. Very few directors exhibit that sort of range over the course of a career, much less at the same time.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Schindler's List (prod. Steven Spielberg, Branko Lustig and Gerald R. Molen)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:Groundhog Day (prod. Harold Ramis and Trevor Albert)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Ba wang bie ji (Farewell My Concubine) (prod. Feng Hsu)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Liam Neeson (Schindler's List)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Bill Murray (Groundhog Day)
Empire of the Sun was the pivot on which Steven Spielberg's career turned. Before, it was all pure fun and escapism; after, his films are characterized by deep shadows.
Ostensibly, Empire of the Sun is the story of one boy's experiences during World War II as he survives internment in a Japanese prison camp in China, but more broadly speaking, it's about the end of childhood.
Childhood is characterized above all by a sense of invulnerability, the fantasy that you're the center of the universe, that everyone is watching you, everyone cares what happens to you. Growing up is largely a process of being disabused of this notion, from the first time you fall and skin your knee, to the dream that didn't come true, to the death of someone important to you. It's a nearly universal experience, that moment of passing through something and coming out the other end changed forever, so much so that when once in a blue moon, you meet someone who's never had life kick them in the ass, they're like freaks with two heads.
But their moment is coming. It comes for everybody eventually.
PICTURE (Drama) winner:Empire Of The Sun (prod. Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:The Princess Bride (prod. Rob Reiner and Andrew Scheinman)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) (prod. Anatole Dauman and Wim Wenders)
ACTOR (Drama) winner: Joe Mantegna (House of Games)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Nicolas Cage (Raising Arizona and Moonstruck)
ACTRESS (Drama) winner: Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner: Cher (Moonstruck)
DIRECTOR (Drama) winner: Wim Wenders (Der Himmel über Berlin a.k.a. Wings of Desire)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride)
SUPPORTING ACTOR winner: Peter Falk (Der Himmel über Berlin a.k.a. Wings of Desire and The Princess Bride)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS winner: Anjelica Huston (The Dead)
SCREENPLAY winner: William Goldman, from his novel (The Princess Bride)
You have until Sunday to vote in this one. (And don't forget to vote in the Classic Hollywood round.)
The Tale of the Tape:
Woody Allen Born: December 1, 1935 (Brooklyn, New York) Directorial Debut: What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) Academy Awards: 21 nominations (6 for direction): 3 wins, including one for direction—Annie Hall (1977) Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (for direction): 2 wins—Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (both for Comedy/Musical) Three More To See: Sleeper, Hannah and Her Sisters and Match Point
The Coen Brothers Born: Joel Coen— December 29, 1954 (Minneapolis, Minnesota); Ethan Coen—September 21, 1957 (Minneapolis, Minnesota) Directorial Debut: Blood Simple (1984) (Ethan credited as producer) Academy Awards: 13 nominations each: 4 wins (including one for direction)—No Country For Old Men (2007) Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (for direction): 2 wins—Fargo (1996) and The Big Lebowski (1998) (both for Comedy/Musical) Three More To See: Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Martin Scorsese Born: November 17, 1942 (Queens, New York) Directorial Debut: Vesuvius VI (short) (1959) Academy Awards: 8 nominations (6 for direction): 1 win—The Departed (2006) Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (for direction): 2 wins—Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990) (both for Drama) Three More To See: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and The Age of Innocence
Steven Spielberg Born: December 18, 1946 (Cincinnati, Ohio) Directorial Debut: The Last Gun (short) (1959) Academy Awards: 12 nominations (6 for direction): 3 wins (including 2 for direction)—Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (for direction): 3 wins— Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) (all for Drama) Three More To See: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jurassic Park
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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