The Academy continued the historical trend it began the year before with Chariots of Fire in giving the 1982 Oscar to Gandhi but Gandhi was one of three films in a very tight race.

Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial started off awards season with its win from The Los Angeles Film Critics, which also named Spielberg Best Director. The National Board of Review then decided to give its award to Gandhi, with Sidney Lumet winning its Best Director award for The Verdict.

The New York Film Critics endorsed the NBR decision and gave their Best Picture award to Gandhi while eschewing that film’s director, Richard Attenborough. They chose to give their Best Director award to another Sidney, actually Sydney – Sydney Pollack for Tootsie.

The National Society of Film Critics threw its weight behind Tootsie as Best Picture and Spielberg as Best Director for E.T.

The Golden Globes honored all three films, naming E.T. their Best Picture – Drama; Tootsie their Best Picture – Musical or Comedy and Gandhi their Best Foreign Film. They gave their Best Director award to Gandhi’s Attenborough.

The Directors Guild nominated the directors of the three big films (Attenborough, Pollack and Spielberg) as well as Wolfgang Petersen for Das Boot and Taylor Hackford for An Officer and a Gentleman.

Oscar’s Best Picture contenders were E.T. (nine nominations, four wins); Gandhi (eleven nominations, eight wins including Best Picture, Director and Actor, Ben Kingsley); Missing (four nominations, one win); Tootsie (ten nominations, one win – Best Supporting Actress, Jessica Lange) and The Verdict (five nominations, no wins). Best Director nods mirrored the Directors Guild except for Hackford who was supplanted by Sidney Lumet for The Verdict.

What then, would the other nominees have been had Oscar gone to a ten picture slate? Certainly Das Boot (six nominations, no wins) and An Officer and a Gentleman (six nominations, two wins – Best Song, “Up Where We Belong” and Best Supporting Actor – Louis Gossett, Jr.) would have been there. So, too, would have Sophie’s Choice (five nominations, one win – Best Actress, Meryl Streep).

Throw in Victor/Victoria (seven nominations, one win) and The World According to Garp (two nominations, no wins) and you have your ten.