By the end of the 1980s several critics’ polls had declared Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull to be one of the greatest films ever made and the best film of the decade. That it was a good movie was never in dispute, but it is a cold, distant, difficult to like film, especially when compared with the immediacy of Robert Redford’s Ordinary People which was the more immediately popular film. In the ensuing decade, however, Redford’s film had been copied over and over in myriad TV movies of the week while Scorsese’s film remained unique. Today, with Ordinary People’s imitators long forgotten, it has regained much of its original relevance as a one of the most moving coming-of-age films in Hollywood history. The battle over whether Oscar got it right this year is not as cut and dry as critics at the end of the decade would have liked us to think.

Ordinary People won three of the five major precursors: the National Board of Review, New York Film Critics and the Golden Globe – Drama awards. Jonathan Demme’s Melvin and Howard won the National Society of Film Critics award while Raging Bull took home only the L.A. Film Critics award. Michael Apted’s Coal Miner’s Daughter won the Golden Globe award for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Oscar’s Best Picture nominees were unique in two ways – three of them, Raging Bull; Coal Miner’s Daughter and David Lynch’s The Elephant Man were biographies of real life people and two of them, Raging Bull and The Elephant Man were in black-and-white for the first time since 1965, which had three such nominees (Darling; Ship of Fools and A Thousand Clowns).

Ordinary People and Roman Polanski’s Tess rounded out the nominees.

Best director nominees lined up with the Best Picture nominees except for Coal Miner’s Daughter’s Apted who was replaced by The Stunt Man’s Richard Rush. The Directors Guild had chosen Apted over Polanski.

The Stunt Man would certainly have been added to the list had the Academy gone to a slate of ten nominees. National Society of Film Critics’ winner Melvin and Howard (nominated for three and winner of two including Best Supporting Actress Mary Steenburgen) would easily have made the list, becoming the fourth nominee about real life people.

Certainly there would be room for Alan Parker’s Fame (nominated for six, winner of two including Best Song – the infectious title tune).

Daniel Petrie’s Resurrection was only nominated for two Oscars, but they were important ones (Best Actress, Ellen Burstyn and Best Supporting Actress, veteran stage actress, Eva Le Gallienne). I think it was strong enough to nab the ninth slot with the last one going to The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars sequel directed by Irvin Kirshner. It had been nominated for four and won one.

The awards themselves went pretty much as everyone expected. Ordinary People took home prizes for Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Timothy Hutton) and Director. Coal Miner’s Daughter’s Sissy Spacek won Best Actress over Ordinary People’s Mary Tyler Moore and Raging Bull’s only major award went to Robert De Niro for Best Actor.