The on-line prognosticators who seem to spend all their waking hours handicapping current Oscar races act as though the world is coming to an end because early critics’ favorite The Social Network has suddenly been usurped by The King’s Speech at certain Guild Awards presentations. This is not the first time, allowing that they may be right, that the near unanimous critical favorite has come up short at the Oscars. Case in point: the Oscars of 35 years ago when 1975’s Nashville and to some extent, Barry Lyndon, were the critical darlings and Jaws the popular favorite, but Oscar went instead for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, arguably the second most popular film with both critics and audiences.

It wasn’t as if Cuckoo Nest’s big wincame out of nowhere. Jack Nicolson seemed to swoop up every award out there for his lead performance and the film was nominated for nine Oscars as compared to Nashville’s five; Barry Lyndon’s seven; Jaws’ four and Dog Day Afternoon’s six. In the end, they all went home with something. Cuckoo Nest won seven; Barry Lyndon four; Jaws three and Nashvilleand Dog Day Afternoon one each.

Milos Forman’s film of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been a Broadway play with Kirk Douglas in the early 1960s. Douglas bought the film rights which he later transferred to his son, Michael, who won his first Oscar as producer of the film. Jack Nicholson assumed the role of the petty criminal whose antics land him in a mental hospital where things go from bad to worse. Louise Fletcher as his nemesis, the dread Nurse Ratched, won the year’s Best Actress Oscar and Brad Dourif was nominated for his portrayal of a sensitive inmate. The film’s wins also included those for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, the first time any film had won the top six Oscars since 1934’s It Happened One Night.

Al Pacino as the down and out gay man who pulls a bank robbery to obtain money for his lover’s sex change operation in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon was Nicholson’s main competition, the third year in a row that both had been nominated. Chris Sarandon as his lover was nominated in support. The other nominees were all fill-ins: Walter Matthau as a grumpy old-time vaudevillian in The Sunshine Boys; Maximilian Schell as a Nazi war criminal on trial in The Man in the Glass Booth and James Whitmore as Harry Truman a in filmed version of his one-man Broadway show, Give ‘em Hell, Harry. Matthau’s co-star, George Burns won the Supporting Actor as Matthau’s former partner in The Sunshine Boys.

Among the actors who were overlooked were Warren Beatty in Shampoo; Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely and Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King, all of them in films that were nominated in other categories.

At least there were choices to be made in the Best Actor category. The Best Actress category was another matter. Louise Fletcher won for what is actually a glorified supporting role. Her chief competition was 21 year-old French actress Isabelle Adjani in a devastating portrayal of Victor Hugo’s mad daughter in Francois Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H., but even in weak year the Academy was not going to give out what would have been only their second award to a foreign language performance.

The other nominees were Carol Kane as an immigrant wife in the barely distributed Hester Street; Glenda Jackson as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler in the shrunken titled Hedda and Ann-Margret who was essentially nominated for rolling around in baked beans in Tommy.

There were two luminous performances by women that were nominated, albeit in the Supporting Actress category. Ronee Blakley as a tormented country singer recovering from a nervous breakdown and Lily Tomlin as the mother of two deaf children who sings in an otherwise all-black choir church were two of the three the standouts in Robert Altman’s multi-layered microcosm of life in the country music business in Nashville. Henry Gibson, who was equally fine as an authoritative male singer, was not nominated in support as he was expected to be, but co-star Keith Carradine as Tomlin’s much younger lover won the film’s only Oscar for writing the plaintive Best Song winner, “I’m Easy”.

Blakely and Tomlin lost to Lee Grant, who played one of hairdresser Warren Beatty’s conquests in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo. The other nominees were Svvlia Miles as an early murder victim in Dick Richards’ remake of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely and Brenda Vaccaro as a foulmouthed Hollywood agent in Guy Green’s film of Jacqueline Susann’s notorious Once Is Not Enough.

Burgess Meredith as Karen Black’s alcoholic father in John Schlesinger’s film of Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust and Jack Warden as Lee Grant’s husband in Shampoo competed with Burns, Dourif and Sarandon for the Supporting Actor prize.

Stanley Kubrick won the BAFTA for his direction of Barry Lyndon, and although AMPAS nominated him in three categories for Picture, Director and Screenplay, it was the film’s four technical nominations that resulted in wins for his film about the titled 18th Century Irish rogue. The film’s Oscar winning candlelit cinematography was generally considered the film;s most stunning achievement.

The winner for Best Foreign Film the year before, Federico Fellini received the tenth and eleventh of his twelve Oscar nominations for writing and directing his memory piece, Amarcord, which literally translates as “I Remember”.

The technical awards that Barry Lyndon didn’t win went to Steven Spielberg’s film of Peter Benchley’s Jaws, the summer blockbuster that began the modern trend toward the mass release of films to as many theatres in as quick a time as was possible to make as much money as quickly as its producers could.

One of the most exciting of modern thrillers, Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor from James Grady’s novel, Six Days of the Condor, with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, was nominated for its editing.

Barbra Streisand reprised her Oscar winning interpretation of Fanny Brice from Funny Girl in Herbert Ross’ Funny Lady, which was nominated for five Oscars.

All films discussed except Give ‘em Hell, Harry and Hedda have been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Unstoppable and the Blu-ray releases of Moonstruck and Rain Man.