1963 has a reputation among revisionist critics as being the weakest year in Oscar history, with the Oscar winning Tom Jones one of the least deserving Best Picture winners of all time. Balderdash! It’s one of the best, but I guess you had to be there to really appreciate it.

The bawdy British comedy from Henry Fielding’s 18th Century novel seemed like a breath of fresh air to audiences starved for something funny and a little bit risqué. Tony Richardson’s inventive direction, Walter Lassaly’s breathtaking cinematography and John Addison’s tingly score all supported John Osborne’s clever screenplay in the service of an extraordinary cast led by Albert Finney and Susannah York. Hugh Griffith, Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood, Joyce Redman and Diane Cilento were the standouts in the huge supporting cast, but truthfully everyone in the film excelled.

One key component of the film’s success was its costumes, but there would be no award for them from Oscar, BAFTA or any other awards giver of the day. The reason is simple. There was no costume designer. The film’s budget was so miniscule that they had to make do with rented costumes throughout the production.

Nominated for ten Oscars, it won four for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score.

One of the year’s biggest surprises was the joyous Lilies of the Field from director Ralph Nelson, known primarily for his hard-hitting TV work. Based on a book by William E. Barrett, the film provided Sidney Poitier with one of his best roles as an itinerant handyman who builds a chapel for a group of East European nuns led by Lilia Skala. Poitier proved a popular Oscar winner despite stiff competition from both Albert Finney in Tom Jones and Paul Newman in Hud. The then rather obscure character actress, Lilia Skala, was also nominated for her performance. In all, the film received five nominations including Best Picture, Black-and-White Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay.

Two-time Oscar winner Elia Kazan had his most critically acclaimed film in years with America Amerca, based on the director’s uncle’s struggles to emigrate to America from Turkey.

Greek actor Stathis Giallelis was extraordinary in the lead and won the Golden Globe for Best Newcomer – Male, an honor he shared with Albert Finney for Tom Jones and Robert Walker, Jr. for the long forgotten The Ceremony.

The film was nominated for four Oscars and won one for Best Black-and-White Art Direction. Kazan himself was the nominee in the three categories it lost: Best Picture, Director and Screenplay. The film, which has long been missing on DVD, is being released today as part of a massive Elia Kazan set that includes fourteen other films, most of which are reissues.

An ambitious undertaking, MGM’s How the West Was Won follows four generations of the fictitious Prescott family from the Erie Canal in the 1830s to their settled home in the West fifty years later. The film, which was shot in Cinerama, required theatrical presentation on screens three times the normal size. The film employed the services of four directors: Henry Hathaway, who shot most it; George Marshall who handled the scenes regarding the building of the railroad; John Ford, who directed the Civil War scenes and an unbilled Richard Thorpe who handled the transitional sequences.

The film’s cast was a who’s who of acting giants of the day including James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Carroll Baker, George Peppard, Carolyn Jones, Walter Brennan, Karl Malden, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter and in extended cameos, John Wayne and Henry Fonda. Spencer Tracy narrated. Raymond Massey, Oscar nominated for playing Abraham Lincoln twenty-three years earlier in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, played the 16th President for the fifth and final time on screen.

The film was nominated for eight Oscars and won three for Editing, Sound and Original Screenplay.

For a notorious flop, Twentieth Century-Fox’s Cleopatra did alright at the Oscars. Nominated for nine awards including Best Picture, it won four for Color Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design and for Special Effects. The historical epic, which starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, directed by two-time Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz, nearly bankrupted the studio. In fact if it hadn’t been for the phenomenal success of The Sound of Music two years later, Fox would have had to shut down.

Trounced by the critics and generally ignored by the public, Cleopatra clearly had no business being in the race for Best Picture. Although I like both Lilies of the Field and How the West Was Won, those two films’ Best Picture nominations were also questionable when you consider that there were at least three films more deserving of the honor.

The year’s best western was not How the West Was Won but Hud. The year’s best religious themed film was The Cardinal, not Lilies of the Field. The year’s best film made in Rome was 8½, not Cleopatra.

A great modern western, Martin Ritt’s film of Larry McMurtry’s novel, Hud provided Paul Newman with one of his signature roles as the ruthless young man who tarnishes everything he touches. Newman won his third Best Actor nomination and Patricia Neal won Best Actress for her wise housekeeper. Melvyn Douglas won the first of his two Best Supporting Actor awards as Hud’s stern but principled father and Brandon de Wilde should have been nominated for his portrayal of Hud’s hero-worshiping nephew.

The film won a third Oscar for James Wong Howe’s evocative Black-and-White Cinematography. It had been nominated for a total of seven.

Otto Preminger’s film of Henry Morton Robinson monumental best-seller, The Cardinal, earned the director his third nomination for Best Director. In all, the film was nominated for a total of six Oscars, including one for John Huston’s wily old bishop and the title character’s mentor.

The film begins with the elevation of Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) to Cardinal, and flashes back to how to he got there. The film is a microcosm of world events in the first half of the Twentieth Century as Fermoyle rises from humble parish priest to confidant to Cardinals in Vienna and Rome, featuring everything from the terror of the Ku Klux Klan to the rise of Nazis. Tryon, Huston and Burgess Meredith as Tryon’s first pastor are excellent. Leon Shamroy’s cinematography is stunning. He was nominated for an Oscar but lost to himself for the ridiculous Cleopatra. Shockingly not nominated, Jerome Moross’ score is one of the best of a year of remarkable film scores.

One of Federico Fellini’s best loved films, 8 ½ features Fellini’s alter-ego, Marcello Mastroianni as a director trying to get through a film he has little interest in, while retreating into a fantasy world where the women in his life appear larger than life. Fellini’s use of music, as well as his swirling camerawork and the performances of various women from Anouk Aimee to Claudia Cardinale to Sandra Milo stand out. The film won Oscars for Best Foreign Film and Best Black-and-White Costume Design. The film was nominated for five Oscars in all, including two for Fellini himself for Direction and Original Screenplay. They accounted for two of his twelve career nominations, all of which he lost.

Among the other high profile films of 1963 garnering at least one Oscar nomination were The L-Shaped Room; This Sporting Life; The Great Escape; Love With the Proper Stranger; The Leopard; The V.I.P.s; Charade and The Birds.

Leslie Caron won her first Oscar nomination in nine years for her uncompromising performance as the young French woman who has an affair with a British writer while pregnant with another man’s child in Bryan Forbes’ The L-Shaped Room. The film featured fine supporting work by Tom Bell, Brock Peters and Cicely Courtneidge.

The British kitchen sink drama, This Sporting Life, directed by Lindsay Anderson, secured acting nominations for Richard Harris as the angry young rugby player and Rachel Roberts as his widowed landlady with whom he has an affair.

A rousing World War II action film, John Sturges’ The Great Escape made Steve McQueen a superstar. Co-starring James Garner and Richard Attenborough, the box office smash was nominated for its special effects.

McQueen’s other major film this year, the romantic comedy, Love With the Proper Stranger, directed by Robert Mulligan,was nominated for five Oscars including one for Natalie Wood as Best Actress.

Luchino Visconti’s acclaimed historical drama, The Leopard,featuring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale in 1860s Sicily, was nominated for its sumptuous color costumes.

A potboiler with little to recommend it, Anthony Asquith’s The V.I.P.s does give us two very good reasons to sit through the year’s other Taylor-Burton pairing – two gals named Maggie. Rising star Maggie Smith had her first major screen role as a secretary secretly in love with her boss and veteran actress Maggie (Margaret) Rutherford won a much deserved Oscar for her delightful pill-popping duchess. Rutherford had become a sensation in her early 70s starring in a series of Miss Marple films.

A reviewer at the time opined that when Audrey Hepburn was a little old lady, her three decades older co-star Cary Grant would still be playing romantic leads. Sadly, Grant retired shortly thereafter and Hepburn didn’t live to become a little old lady. Happily, though, we have Stanley Donen’s Charade in which they both shine. It was nominated for its title song.

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was one of his most popular films. Though dramatically weak, its final scenes are among the most terrifying in any film. It was nominated for its special effects.

All films discussed, except for The L-Shaped Room, Love With the Proper Stranger and The Ceremony have been released on DVD in the U.S. The L-Shaped Room is available in an excellent Region 2 release from the U.K.

Among the week’s new DVD releases are Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Charlie St. Cloud.