Category: Academy Awards History

Three films dominated the year-end awards in 1961: West Side Story, Judgment at Nuremberg and La Dolce Vita, with the latter becoming the first serious foreign language contender for a Best Picture Oscar nomination since Grand Illusion way back in 1938. Alas, when the nominations were announced, the Italian film had to settle for just…

1960 was an interesting year at the Oscars. Adult themes were much more in evidence than ever before. Sex was one of the themes, if not the major one in The Apartment; Sons and Lovers; Home From the Hill; Elmer Gantry; Psycho; The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Never…

1959 was a year of many big films – Ben-Hur; North by Northwest; Some Like It Hot; On the Beach; Imitation of Life; The Diary of Anne Frank; Anatomy of a Murder and The Nun’s Story to name a few with room for only five in Oscar’s Best Picture line-up. Four of them, Ben-Hur; The…

1958 was an interesting year at the Oscars. The two films now regarded as the greatest of the year, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil were not on Oscar’s short list. Nevertheless some very good films were. Oscar chose to embrace instead, Morton Da Costa’s film of the irrepressible stage hit, Auntie…

Big was still in in 1957, but a transposed TV drama a la Marty managed to sneak in amongst the five nominees for Best Picture. Joining The Bridge on the River Kwai; Witness for the Prosecution; Peyton Place and Sayonara in the Best Picture race was Sidney Lumet’s first feature film, Twelve Angry Men based…

If 1955’s Oscar wins for Marty flew in the face of industry moguls, 1956 was right up their alley. All five Best Picture nominees were major productions: Around the World in 80 Days; Friendly Persuasion; Giant; The King and I and The Ten Commandments. The anticipated winner was, of course, Around the World in 80…

For several years Hollywood had been doing everything it could to entice customers away from their TV sets and into theatres.  By 1955, films shot on location in widescreen processes and glorious Technicolor and films with mature themes that wouldn’t play on TV were commonplace.  How ironic, then, that a little film shot in 35MM…

The quality of film released in 1954 was extremely high. Even so, the Best Director and Picture Oscar and races seemed open and shut cases for Elia Kazan and On the Waterfront, and indeed the film became the first to sweep the National Board of Review, The New York Film Critics, the Golden Globes and…

Generally regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, if not the single greatest film of all time, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 masterpiece, Tokyo Story, about an elderly Japanese couple making an exhausting railroad journey to visit their faraway children for the last time, met the fate of all of Ozu’s other films in the…

There are four films eligible for Best Picture consideration in 1952 that are still highly regarded today. Two of them, The Quiet Man and High Noon, were indeed nominated. The other two, Singin’ in the Rain and Rashomon were not. The Quiet Man was John Ford’s labor of love that he tried to make for…

The 1951 Oscar race was expected to be between two critically acclaimed dramatic films, Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’ stage sensation, A Streetcar Named Desire with its twelve nominations and George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun, the second screen version of Theodore Dreiser’s acclaimed 1925 novel. Ultimately, however, Vincente Minnelli’s celebration of the…

Two films about show business dominated the 1950 Oscars. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ All About Eve, which was set in the theatre world, and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, which was set in the film world, were both fascinating films that have endured through the years. Though both films are greatly identified with their female stars, Bette…

Several themes dominant in the films of 1949 were recognized in year-end awards. War films, which were anathema after the war, re-emerged with a new maturity in Twelve O’Clock High; Battleground; Home of the Brave and Sands of Iwo Jima. Children in peril in The Boy With Green Hair, The Fallen Idol, The Bicycle Thief,…

The British assault on the Oscars in the previous three years was nothing compared to what happened in 1948. Two British films, Hamlet and The Red Shoes were not only among the five nominees for Best Picture, but one of them, Hamlet, actually won, causing major consternation amongst the moguls. The others in the race…

If 1946 cracked open the door for foreign films at the Oscars, 1947 swung it wide open. It wasn’t just the acting, directing and writing categories that were invaded this time, but the sacred domain of the technical world. Two British imports, Great Expectations and Black Narcissus won the Cinematography and Art Direction awards, Great…