The Oscars and International Directors, Part 3: The 1980s

 

 

For most of the history of Hollywood to this point by and large international directors had not made much of an impact in the traditional American film system  and with the exception of Antonioni and Truffaut very few American actors had been involved in them. Perhaps it was fitting that the director of the first  international film to receive a best picture nomination would cross that barrier.

After his groundbreaking Z Costa-Gavras had spent the 1970s continuing the make movies in France. Then in 1982 Universal Pictures had given him the greenlight to make his first American feature. Missing tells the story of how during the Chilean Coup which overthrew the Democratically elected Marxist leader Salvador Allende and installed the Pinochet regime (a measure sanctioned by the Nixon administration) an idealist American writer (John Shea) goes missing and his wife (Sissy Spacek and father (Jack Lemmon) go to Chile to try and find him. Released that March the film became one of the most critically acclaimed of 1982 and essentially told the kind of story Z had in a more American based setting. The film would win Best Picture and Best Actor at Cannes and be nominated for five Golden Globes.

The movie would be nominated for Best Picture that year in one of the better lineups of that decade: ET, Tootsie, The Verdict and Gandhi. Jack Lemmon received his eighth – and last – Academy Award nomination while Sissy Spacek received her third for Best Actress. Costa-Gavras was nominated for Best Screenplay but of the five nominees for Best Picture he would not receive a corresponding Best Director nod  - for reasons he might sympathize with.

The previous year one of the nominees for Best Foreign Film by the Golden Globes was Das Boot, the story of a German U-Boat stalking the North Atlantic during World War II.  Billed as ‘The Other Side of World War II, it had been a box office smash in America earning near $12 million in U.S. It also shot to international attention Wolfgang Petersen, who had been directing West Germany since he was 24.

That year Das Boot made history when it received more Academy Award nominations then any international film in history with seven. Among them were two for Petersen for directing and screenwriting.

Immediately after that Petersen would be signed to direct The Neverending Story. This decision was immensely decried as many thought he had sacrificed his eye for detail for ‘standard commercial Hollywood blockbusters’. The fact remains that many of those movies are among the most highly regarded ‘commercial Hollywood blockbusters’ by critics, not just Neverending Story but the masterpiece In The Line of Fire and such well received films as Air Force One and The Perfect Storm. Petersen’s shifting to Hollywood was the first sign of a sea change in how international directors would be willing to work with American studios.

Costa-Gavras would make films in both France and America. His most acclaimed one in America would be Music Box in which Jessica Lange plays a lawyer who defends her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) accused of being a Nazi war criminal. Lange would be nominated for Best Actress for her work. His last film he made with an American studio was Mad City where Dustin Hoffman plays a reporter trying to take an advantage of a hostage situation to resurrect his career. In 1997 it may have been only slightly ahead of its time.

1983 witnessed one of the most notorious slights in Academy history. That year Barbara Streisand had astonished the industry when she became the first actress of any note to write, directed, produce and star in a major Hollywood film with Yentl. While the film was polarizing – the movie was nominated for Razzies as well as Golden Globes, it made history at the latter. The film won Best Comedy or Musical as Barbara Streisand became the first – and still the only – woman to win Best Director for the Golden Globes. An Oscar nomination in every category seemed all but certain.

But on the day of the nominations Streisand was completely skunked even though Yentl was nominated for five other Oscars. It wasn’t the most bizarre of the oddities that year: The Right Stuff was nominated for Best Picture but writer-director Philip Kaufmann was completely ignored while Silkwood was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay but not Best Picture. What led to the biggest uproar was who one of the Best Director nominees was.

In 1982 Ingmar Bergman had made what he claimed at the time would be his last film (he would back away from that) Fanny & Alexander. Nearly four hours long and one of his most autobiographical movies to that point, it told the story of two young Swedish children and the comedies and tragedies of their family. The film had been highly regarded by Critics from the moment it debut; it won Best Foreign Film in LA and New York Film Critics and the New York Film Critics had given Bergman their Best Director prize yet again. The film had won Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and Bergman had been nominated for Best Director – and tellingly the Directors Guild Award while Streisand had not been. But the nominees had also included Philip Kaufman and Lawrence Kasdan for The Big Chill and they had been excluded as well; the fact that Bergman was included was a bridge too far and not just for those who were devoted to Streisand.

On Oscar night Fanny & Alexander was, with the exception of Terms of Endearment the biggest winner with four Academy Awards, winning Best Foreign Film, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. Bergman never directed another film but he continued to write up until 2003. By that point, however, the Oscars had their fill of him; he never received another nomination of any kind.

If the events of 1983 caused a firestorm what would happen two years later caused an earthquake. In 1985 Steven Spielberg, at this point known as the most successful director in Hollywood, famously said: “I’m going into the deep end of the pool. That meant making his first truly serious film. Collaborating with Quincy Jones he would work to adapt Alice Walker’s already iconic novel The Color Purple to the big screen.

While he would be treated with mixed opinions by critics at the time and while several African-Americans were annoyed that a white man was retelling the story of an African-American woman, it is impossible to believe in 1985 anyone but Spielberg had the clout to get the film greenlit, much less directed it. The movie opened slowly on Christmas weekend but it very quickly became a box office sensation and shot its unknown leads Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to superstardom.

Then on the nomination day The Color Purple was nominated for eleven Oscars, tied with Out Of Africa. But none of them were for Steven Spielberg. And in what was an eerie echo of 1975 when he had been slighted by the Academy for Federico Fellini, it was even harder to look at it differently this time. Spielberg had been nominated for the Directors Guild Award and three of his fellow nominees were present: John Huston for Prizzi’s Honor, Peter Weir for Witness and Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa. Hector Babenco had been nominated for Kiss of the Spider Woman but the movie had been nominated for Best Picture, Actor and Screenplay as well. No one complained about that. It was the fifth nominee that sent everybody in alarm.

Akira Kurosawa was one of the greatest filmmakers in history. The reason he was known only to a relative few in 1985 was because he was Japanese. Anyone who knew anything about films at all knew that meant nothing. The movies he wrote and directed are ranked among the greatest of all time by even the casual film lover: Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood. We see the impact of his movies in America for years, sometimes more directly than others – The Magnificent Seven and even Star Wars bear his imprint. And yet in large part to the frequent European drive towards international film, not a single one of his films had even been nominated for Best Foreign film or anything else.

Then at 75 he made a film that is considered one of his greatest Ran. With influences in King Lear it tells the story of an elderly warlord who retires and hands his empire to his free sons. Their new power corrupts them causing them to turn on each other and on him. A project Kurosawa had been trying to get made for nearly twenty years he had finally done so by 1985.

The film put Kurosawa back into the spotlight among his lovers and critics went out of their way to recognize him. The National Board of Review gave them their prize for Best Director and his movie dominated the foreign film awards across the globe. The film would be nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes but would lose to Argentina’s The Official Story. Still everyone thought that would be as far as it went.

Then on nomination day Kurosawa was nominated for Best Director and Spielberg wasn’t. The movie world went into an uproar. Spielberg would end up being given his first Directors Guild Award almost as a consolation prize but in what was the biggest shutout in Oscar history The Color Purple didn’t win a single one of its eleven nominations. When Out Of Africa did – ironically Kurosawa was one of three directors who ended up presenting Best Picture that year – it stunned Hollywood that had never thought that much of the film to begin with. That The Color Purple was unrecognized is a stain on the Oscars during that period; for Spielberg sadly, it was just another slight he had to live with.

The last major slight of the 1980s came just two years later and while it hasn’t ranked in the historical record as much as those that Spielberg and Streisand underwent, it makes the Oscars look even worse. That said, it would be yet another indication of how the world of Hollywood was letting in more directors.

One of the more surprising critical sensations and box office sensations of 1987 came from a Swedish import but it bore nothing resembling of the tone that Bergman had let them know. My Life as A Dog was a simple, wistful comedy telling the story a young boy in small town Sweden named Ingemar who is sent to left with relatives while his terminally ill mother is in her final stages. We see him live in a small town, dealing with charming people and watch him fall in love – though he doesn’t know it – with a tomboy. Much of the story centers around the boxing matches between Ingemar Johnson and Floyd Paterson, the second of which is the climax of the film.

This sweet, simple film was the product of Lasse Hallstrom, who might have been known even in his home country for his direction of the music videos of ABBA more than anything else. The film warmed the hearts of critics across the world, winning Best Foreign film from the LA to New York, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Golden Globes. Still when he was nominated for the Director’s Guild Award, no one thought much of it.

And then on nomination day, Hallstrom was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay. It was considered a miracle by those who’d never even thought it could earn distribution in America. But one person who didn’t think so was James L. Brooks.

That year Brook had directed his follow-up film to the Oscar winner Terms of Endearment Broadcast News an exceptional story about a love triangle between a news producer, a self-doubting reporter and a new anchor. The film had been a critical and box office hit and one of the biggest award winners leading up to the nominations. Holly Hunter had dominated the prizes for Best Actress, Albert Brook has won the Boston Society of film critics prize for Best Actor, William Hurt continued his hot streak that had started with The Big Chill and the film had swept the five top prizes at the New York Film Critics  -Picture, Director, Actor (Jack Nicholson, who also was honored for Witches of Eastwick and Ironweed) Actress and Screenplay.

And then on nomination day Broadcast News was nominated for Best Picture, along with Hope & Glory, Moonstruck, The Last Emperor and Fatal Attraction. Brooks was the only director of a nominated film who was nominated. Just as with Color Purple the year before, Broadcast News was completely shutout, though because it was a comedy that was less shocking than Color Purple.

Just before presenting Best Director Robin Williams, himself a first time Oscar nominee that year, stated “And along with an Oscar, this year the Academy is giving out a green card”. Neither Hallstrom nor Bernardo Bertolucci (who would receive the prize) seemed to find this funny. But in a sense it was a reality for Hallstrom.

Like Petersen, he would find acceptance in Hollywood. Unlike Petersen, no one could accuse Hallstrom of selling out as his sweetness and attention to detail led him to make some of the most quiet and critically acclaimed films of the 1990s. These would include such works as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which earned Leonardo DiCaprio his first Oscar nomination, The Cider House Rules which would be nominated for seven Oscars including a second director nomination for Hallstrom and Chocolat, best known for its overpromotion at the 2000 Oscars but still a sweet film. Later films tended towards overblown romances (Dear John, Safe Haven) but the touch is still there with some of them.

In the final piece of this series I will deal with the 1990s and how it laid the groundwork for the official reopening of the Academy Awards to international films that we see to this day.