Hollywood Life Magazine

Asides

• The last time a film won the Best Picture Musical Comedy at the Golden Globes then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director was in 1968. The film was Oliver! Despite it being 1968, one of the most tumultuous periods of history for the US, the Academy went old school with Oliver, a Dickensian tale about an orphan, directed by Carol Reed. How are the ways that 2011 resembles 1968, other than the fact that Th Artist is poised to do what Olvier! did – win the Globe for Picture Musical/Comedy and then win Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars.

  The only reason it’s worth noting is that it’s rare for a musical/comedy film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. It’s even rarer for the director to also win. The Academy tends to prefer films with more gravitas. And in the years since 1968 when a lighter film won Best Picture, the director of a much more serious film won Best Director. And that director generally won the DGA as well. However, in 1968 the winner of the DGA was not the eventual Oscar winner. Anthony Harvey won the Directors Guild, but Carol Reed ended up winning the Oscar, along with Oliver! winning for Best Picture.

  Neither Reed nor Harvey had won the Globe for Director that year. Instead, Paul Newman won for Rachel, Rachel. The Ace Eddie went to Bullitt. It was a split year in many ways. It was also a nostalgic year, a year that represented strong female characters in the oscar race, a year when Best Actress ended in a tie (Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand) and a year that was more interesting for the films that weren’t nominated than the films that were:

  2001: A Space Odyssey
  The Producers
  Faces
  Rosemary’s Baby
  Once Upon a Time in the West
  Performance
  The Odd Couple

  And then some ironic titles vis a vis this year:
  Shame (Bergman)
  Planet of the Apes

  The Academy picked these five movies instead:

  Oliver!
  Lion in Winter
  Funny Girl
  Rachel, Rachel
  Romeo and Juliet

  It’s easier to see what the definition of the “Oscar movie” means when you look at that list. Clearly, not a one of those five outlasted Kubrick’s monumental 2001. But it’s doubly ironic that Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life was also nominated this year, since it’s always being compared to 2001. It is eery how similar this year is to 1968. If it comes full circle, THe Artist and Michel Hazanavicius will become the first film since 1968 to first win Globe for Musical and then win the Oscar for Picture and Director.

  Since Oliver! only these films have gone on to win Best Picture after winning Picture in Musical/Comedy at the Globes but none of them won the Oscar for directing:

  Driving Miss Daisy (Oliver Stone won director for Born on the Fourth of July)
  Shakespeare in Love (Steven Spielberg won director for Saving Private Ryan)
  Chicago (Roman Polanski won director for The Pianist)

  Two of these are Weinstein joints, and the other didn’t even have a Director nomination.

  Funnily enough, all of the above directors also won the Golden Globe for Directing, as Martin Scorsese has done this year. Though it’s almost impossible to predict a split, if I were ever going to predict one I would do so this year.

  The best case scenario for The Artist is that it follows Oliver!’s path. It could also follow Chicago, where it won the Globe for Musical/Comedy and then won the DGA but lost Director at the Oscars. The other weird coincidence this year has with the Chicago year is that Martin Scorsese won that year also for Gangs of New York, which then went on to win no Oscars.

  Chicago and The Artist are both about one star overtaking another and both end with a dance number. Both were loved and hit hard with critics of the race. And both are films most anyone can enjoy. The Artist, of course, feels like it was something different from everything else out there. Chicago had much more of a hard edge.

  There isn’t a film like Born on the Fourth of July, Saving Private Ryan or The Pianist in the race. Therefore, Hazanavicius doesn’t have the same kind of competition. But Martin Scorsese is a force to be reckoned with and Hugo is a triumph, even if people like to talk about well, the money.