1983 was what I would call an off-year at the Oscars.  There were five good films nominated for Best Picture, but few would call any of them great.  The winner, Terms of Endearment, was the kind of film that might elicit a Best Picture nomination in other years, but would not be given much of a chance of winning.

Writer-producer-director James L. Brooks, who had an extremely successful career in television, has made only six films in a screen career spanning almost thirty years.  Terms of Endearment was his first.  Only two of his subsequent films, 1987’s Broadcast News and 1997’s As Good As It Gets were hits.  The other three, 1994’s I’ll Do Anything; 2004’s Spanglish and last year’s How Do You Know were unmitigated disasters both critically and commercially.

With Terms of Endearment, Brooks, who had been best known for TV’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi, had the good fortune to be working from Larry McMurtry’s source novel.  McMurtry’s Hud and The Last Picture Show had previously scored with Oscar voters and McMurtry himself would later win an Oscar for his adaptation of Brokeback Mountain.

Brooks also had the good fortune to be working with a superb cast headed by Shirley MacLaine Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels and John Lithgow, all of whom, except for Daniels, received nominations for their performances.  MacLaine and Winger, who from all accounts, had a volatile relationship off camera, used it to particular advantage, playing a mother and daughter who were never on the best of terms.  MacLaine, who had been nominated for five previous Oscars without winning (four for acting, one for writing, producing and directing a documentary), was the odds-on favorite to win Best Actress and she did.  Winger, who had been nominated for the previous year’s An Officer and a Gentleman, in which she didn’t get along with her co-star, Richard Gere, either, was probably her closest competition.

Jack Nicholson, playing a retired astronaut, won his second of three Oscars and his only one in support.  He and MacLaine make an odd, yet endearing couple.  In all, the film won five Oscars, including three for Brooks as writer, producer and director.  It had received a total of eleven nominations.

The Best Picture nominee with the second most nominations was Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, which was nominated for eight and won four for Editing, Score, Sound and Sound Effects.  The film, which is breathtaking in its depiction of the early astronauts unfortunately treats peripheral characters, especially reporters and politicians, as buffoons, which I think is a huge mistake.  It renders what could have been a transcendent work of art into what at times seems more like a parody than a serious exploration of the times.  On the plus side it provided excellent acting opportunities for Oscar nominee Sam Shepard as legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager and Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward and Lance Henriksen among the first astronauts.  Harris plays John Glenn.

Veteran character actor Robert Duvall had one of his best roles as a broken down, middle-aged country singer in Tender Mercies, for which he won the year’s Best Actor Oscar on his fourth nomination.  Horton Foote also won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  The film had received a total of five nominations including Best Director, Bruce Beresford.

An unusual film, Peter Yates’ The Dresser is a character study about an aging, not very likeable actor, played with his usual brilliance by Albert Finney and his valet, or dresser, played by Tom Courtenay.  Both actors are superb and very much deserved their nominations for Best Actor.  The film was also nominated for Best Director and Adapted Screenplay.

A gathering of friends for the funeral of one of their contemporaries was the story behind Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, which in addition to its Best Picture nod received just two other nominations, for Best Original Screenplay and Supporting Actress, Glenn Close.  Although Close was the one singled out, the film also provided fine acting opportunities for Kevin Kline, William Hurt, Jeff Golblum, JoBeth Williams, Tom Berenger, Meg Tilly and especially Mary Kay Place.  Kevin Costner played the corpse.

Other films Oscar liked this year included Fanny & Alexander; Testament; Silkwood;  Educating Rita; Heart Like a Wheel; Yentl; The Year of Living Dangerously; Cross Creek and  Return of the Jedi.    

Eight years earlier Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage was declared ineligible for Oscar consideration because it was shown on Swedish television the year before.  No such controversy attached itself to Bergman’s last masterpiece, Fanny & Alexander because although made for Swedish television, the five hour TV cut, which was to be shown over four nights, was not shown until December, 1983.  The three hour theatrical version was shown first in Sweden in December, 1982.

Nominated for six Oscars, this beautifully wrought film of the lives of children in turn-of-the-twentieth-century in Sweden won four, for Best Foreign Film, Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design.  Bergman, nominated for the eighth and ninth time for Best Director and Screenplay, respectively, did not win, and in fact has never won a competitive Oscar.  He did receive the Thalberg award at the 1971 Oscars.

A devastating film from Lynne Littman, who had won an Oscar for one of her documentaries, Testmaent was her first narrative film and one that cut to the bone.  Jane Alexander in perhaps the performance of her career is beautifully nuanced as a mother facing the end of the world after a nuclear disaster has killed off most of the world’s population.  Roxana Zal as her daughter is quite moving as well, and the supporting cast includes Lukas Haas, William Devane, Philip Anglim, Lilia Skala, Leon Ames, Lurene Tuttle, Rebecca De Mornay and Kevin Costner, all of whom are given a moment or two to shine as well.  It’s a forgotten gem that deserves to be better known.

The already much lauded Meryl Streep picked up her fifth nomination for Silkwood, the true story of a worker at a plutonium plant who is deliberately contaminated, psychologically tortured and probably murdered to prevent her from exposing safety violations at the plant.  Kurt Russell as her husband and Cher, Oscar nominated as her friend, were also memorable.  The film received a total of five nominations including those for Best Editing, Original Screenplay and Director, Mike Nichols.

The fifth Best Actress nomination went to Julie Walters for the British comedy, Educating Rita, which was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Actor, Michael Caine as the professor who brings insight to the housewife’s life.

Missing out on a Best Actress nomination, although the Globes nominated her for Best Actress-Drama, Bonnie Bedelia gave what was far and away her best screen performance as real life drag racer Shirley Muldowney.  The film did receive a nomination for Best Costume Design.

Barbra Stresiand had been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress- Musical or Comedy and won the Globe for Best Director for Yentl, her dream project of the young girl who poses as a boy in order to obtain an education.  The forty-one year-old actress was a bit long in the tooth for the role, but she could still sing.  The film won an Oscar for Best Song Score.  It was also nominated for two of its songs, as well as for Best Art Direction and a surprise nomination for Amy Irving for Supporting Actress.

Peter Weir’s political thriller, The Year of Living Dangerously, won an Oscar for diminutive actress Linda Hunt as a half-Chinese male dwarf photographer in one of the most amazing performances of the era.  She remains the only performer to win an Oscar for playing a member of the opposite sex.

Mary Steenburgen starred as author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek, but it was supporting players Rip Torn and Alfre Woodard who received the Oscar nominations for their performances along with nods for Best Score and Costume Design.

The last film in George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi, was nominated for four Oscars, but its only win was a special achievement award for Best Visual Effects.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include the most recent Best Picture Oscar winner, The King’s Speech as well as Oscar contender Rabbit Hole.