Released in June, 1974, Roman Polanski’s modern noir, Chinatown, released by Paramount,was the best reviewed and most talked film released for most of the year. Then in December, Paramount released Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II, the second film in his Godfather trilogy, which became an even bigger hit than Chinatown.

Neither film won the early precursors. The National Board of Review gave that honor to Coppola’s other film of that year, the low budget thriller, The Conversation, released back in April. The New York Film Critics went with Federico Fellini’s memory piece, Amarcord,and the National Society of Film Critics with Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, which had been shown in a longer version on Swedish TV. Neither of the latter two were eligible for Oscar consideration, Amarcord because it hadn’t yet opened in Los Angeles and Marriage because of its prior TV showing, even if no one in the Academy was likely to have seen it unless they happened to be in Sweden when it was being broadcast.

Paramount was sitting pretty with all three of their prestige films, Chinatown; The Godfather Part II and The Conversation nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes. Chinatownwon. All three films were subsequently nominated for Oscars for Best Picture. Chinatownand The Godfather Part II were tied for the most nominations, eleven each, while The Conversation received three.

In the end the second entry in The Godfather saga beat the complex Chinatown with Godfather II taking home six Oscars including those for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro), and Chinatown taking home just one for Original Screenplay. The paranoid thriller, The Conversation, a long shot at best, went home empty-handed.

The Godfather Part II became the first sequel to win a Best Picture Oscar and Robert De Niro became the first performer to win over two co-stars nominated in the same category. Lee Strasberg and Michael V. Gazzo had also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Fred Astaire, nominated for the first time in his long career for the disaster flick, The Towering Inferno, had been the odds-on favorite to win. Jeff Bridges, who filled the fifth slot in the caper film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, had virtually no chance.

Also nominated for Best Picture were Bob Fosse’s Lenny,a biopic about controversial stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, and Irwin Allen’s all-star cast The Towering Inferno, the first film to be co-produced by two major studios, Twentieth Century-Fox and Warner Bros., both of which had originally intended to produce their own film about a high-rise fire. The Towering Inferno won three of the Oscars it was nominated for, while Lenny lost all six it was nominated for.

Other films lighting Oscar’s fire this year include Murder on the Orient Express; Day for Night; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Blazing Saddles; Harry and Tonto; A Woman Under the Influence; Claudine; The Three Musketeers; Young Frankenstein; Earthquake and Lacombe, Lucien.

Nominated for six Oscars, and winner of one, Lumet’s film of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, yet a fourth major Paramount release, was an ingeniously cast film with Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Wendy Hiller, Rachel Roberts, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark, Anthony Perkins, Jacqueline Bisset and Michael York among its starry players. Ingrid Bergman’s win for Best Supporting Actress as a mousy missionary was something of a surprise as Bergman’s friend Valentina Cortese was expected to win for her unforgettable turn as the aging actress who keeps forgetting her lines in Francois Trufaut’s Day for Night. Bergman, whose third Oscar win this was, acknowledged Cortese in her acceptance speech, angering the other nominees – Diane Ladd in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Talia Shire in The Godfather Part II and Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles, who felt slighted by her remarks. Subsequently it has become the norm, when winners single out other performances in their category to acknowledge all the nominees, not just one. Non-winners who are mentioned by gracious winners now, have Bergman’s faux pas to thank for the notice.

If the Astaire loss and the Bergman win were surprises, Art Carney’s win as Best Actor for Paul Mazurksy’s Harry and Tonto was something of a shock. The veteran actor, who was best known for his TV work, was a first time nominee up against four popular previous nominees, all in higher profile roles. Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express and Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in Lenny weren’t expected to win, but the race was thought to be very close between Chinatown’s private detective, Jack Nicolson and Godfather II’s regining Godfather, Al Pacino.

Carney was excellent as the old man on a road trip in Harry and Tonto, but I’ve always had a sneaky suspicion that he won as a compliment to Best Actress winner Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, whose character also goes on a road trip. Not only that, but Burstyn had played Carney’s daughter in his film and much publicity was made of the fact that she was once a chorus girl on The Jackie Gleason Show on which Carney was a beloved fixture.

Burstyn herself was a late bloomer, both as an actress and as an entrant in this year’s race. With two solid nominations behind her and an iconic role that later spawned a long-running TV series, one would think her Alicewould have been an easy winner, but that wasn’t the case. Early victories were won by Liv Ullmann in the ineligible Scenes From a Marriage and Gena Rowlands in husband John Cassavetes’ latest angst-ridden drama, A Woman Under the Influence. In fact Burstyn’s film didn’t even open in New York where it might have competed in the critics’ awards until late January, 1975.

Burstyn’s Oscar competition consisted of Rowlands; Faye Dunaway in Chinatown;Valerie Perrine in Lenny and Diahann Carroll in Claudine. Rowlands and Dunaway were, of course, threats, but Perrine, who many thought should have been nominated in suppor,t had little chance of winning. Neither did Carroll, whose film was little seen. Although nominated for a Golden Globe in Comedy, she lost to Raquel Welch in The Three Musketeers, that’s how low a profile her film had.

Comedy was really in short supply this year, with only Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles being of particular note. The former was nominated for Adapted Screenplay and Sound, the latter for Supporting Actress; Editing and its title song.

Nominated for four Oscars, Mark Robson’s Earthquake won for Best Sound and picked up a Special Award for Visual Effects.

Amarcord, although it couldn’t compete in the regular Oscar categories, was Italy’s official entrant for consideration for Best Foreign Film, where it was nominated and won over Louis Malle’s Lambe, Lucien, the year’s third high profile foreign language film behind Amarcord and Scenes From a Marriage. Fourth, if you count the previous year’s winner for Best Foreign Film, Day for Night, nominated for three Oscars this year including two for director-writer Francois Truffault in addition to the previously mentioned Valentina Cortese.

All filsm discussed have been released on DVD within the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Life As We Know It and You Again as well as the Blu-ray debuts of Amarcord and Thelma & Louise.