Seeing as how Robert Altman is receiving an Honorary Oscar tomorrow night, I thought I would look at his nomination history, and that of other directors in Academy history. In 2001, Altman joined a select group - those with five or more nominations for Best Director. He also joined another distinctive group - those with five or more nominations and no wins. Let's run the list of top nominees over the years:
William Wyler - 12 nominations (3 wins)
Billy Wilder - 8 nominations (2 wins)
David Lean - 7 nominations (2 wins)
Fred Zinnemann - 7 nominations (1 win)
Frank Capra - 6 nominations (3 wins)
Steven Spielberg - 6 nominations (2 wins)
Woody Allen - 6 nominations (1 win)
John Ford - 5 nominations (4 wins)
George Stevens - 5 nominations (3 wins)
Elia Kazan - 5 nominations (2 wins)
George Cukor - 5 nominations (1 win)
John Huston - 5 nomintations (1 win)
Clarence Brown - 5 nominations (0 wins)
Alfred Hitchcock - 5 nominations (0 wins)
Martin Scorsese - 5 nominations (0 wins)
King Vidor - 5 nominations (0 wins)
and
Robert Altman - 5 nominations (0 wins)
Altman is now one of five men who have gone to bat five times without ever seeing the gold. By the looks of things, each of them should win on the next nomination as no one has more than five nominations without at least one statue to show for it. There are others sitting just below the five nomination benchmark that also have empty mantles at home, among them: Peter Weir (4 nom.), Sidney Lumet (4 nom.), Stanley Kubrick (4 nom.), Federico Fellini (4 nom.), Ingmar Bergman (3 nom.), James Ivory (3 nom.) and Norman Jewison (3 nom.). And two others that have seen at least four nominations with only one win - Francis Ford Coppola and Mike Nichols.
As crazy as it may seem that Robert Altman has never won an Oscar, once you look at his nomination history, you begin to see a clear picture why. Let's take a look at his nominations first,
- M*A*S*H (1970)
- Nashville (1975)
- The Player (1992)
- Short Cuts (1993)
- Gosford Park (2001)
That list is pretty inclusive of Altman's best films. I am also partial to Kansas City and Cookie's Fortune, but neither were good enough to warrent a nomination. And one other - McCabe and Mrs. Miller - might have deserved a nomination, but the competition was strong enough to shut Altman out. Besides, what little I have seen of that film, I would not have assumed it deserved such recognition.
So let's take a closer look at each year Altman had a chance to go home with the gold. In 1970, his competition included Federico Fellini for Fellini Satyricon, Arthur Hiller for Love Story, Ken Russell for Women in Love and the winner, Franklin J. Schaffner for Patton. Patton also won Best Picture that year, a pattern which would repeat itself. Given the wildly divergent paths that M*A*S*H and Patton take in their stance on war, and the likely age of the voters at the time, there was no way for Altman to win this year. And frankly, though I love both films, Patton is the better one. So they got it right this year.
In 1975, Altman went up against Fellini again for Amarcord, Stanley Kubrick for Barry Lyndon (a dreadfully slow film), a four time loser in Sidney Lumet for Dog Day Afternoon and the winner, Milos Foreman for another Best Picture winner, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Once again, I have to say the voters got it right. To many, Nashville is Altman's finest work, but it does not stand up to Cuckoo's Nest. In fact, Dog Day Afternoon is a better film than Nashville if you ask me, but not so much for it's direction. Chalk this up to another year for Altman to run up against better competition.
In 1992, Altman made a comeback with the wonderful and biting The Player and found himself again up for the Oscar against Martin Brest for Scent of a Woman, James Ivory for Howards End, Neil Jordan for The Crying Game and Clint Eastwood, who won for Unforgiven, another Best Picture winner. Outside of Eastwood, it was a pretty weak field. But between The Player and Unforgiven, the voters got it right once again. An amazing accomplishment for the Academy.
However, in 1993, Altman showed he was not yet ready to step back out of the spotlight when he was once again nominated for Short Cuts alongside Jane Campion for The Piano, James Ivory again for The Remains of the Day, Jim Sheridan for In the Name of the Father and the winner for Best Picture Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg who finally broke his own winless streak. This year was very strong, and Altman's film is probably one of the weaker entries among the five. Short Cuts was impressive, but also had a tendency to drag at times, and in some ways, I felt Altman was relying on used conventions and techniques that he had used countless times before and would go on to run them into the ground with Ready to Wear and other such drek.
But in 2001, Altman made what I consider to be his finest film - Gosford Park. It's polished and rich in color, texture and character. The acting is unbelievable and the experience an immersion. But his competition was tough. Ridley Scott for Black Hawk Down, David Lynch for Mulholland Drive, the winner, Ron Howard for Best Picture A Beautiful Mind, and the man that should have won, Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Funny how the one year they got it wrong, it still should not have gone to Altman. As great as Gosford Park is, it pales in comparison to the first installment of Jackson's epic trilogy. And the first one was the finest. He won for the third when he should have won for the first.
Even looking at the year McCabe and Mrs. Miller would have been up, Altman would have had to compete against Peter Bogdanovich for The Last Picture Show, Stanley Kubrick for A Clockwork Orange, Norman Jewison for Fiddler on the Roof, John Schlesinger for Sunday Bloody Sunday and the winner, William Friedkin for The French Connection. Another correct year in the voting.
So all told, Altman has just had bad luck. His best films seem to happen in very strong years. Too bad his career has been so uneven or he might have been able to beat the odds a time or two. Altman, or anyone of his generation of filmakers, was never going to equal a John Ford or William Wyler. The make up of the Academy voters has had two distinct groups for the past many years - the younger Hollywood who have more of an open mind about experimentation and welcome political and social messages in film, and an older Hollywood, more conservative in it's mindset and somewhat resentful of the newer generations.
In fact, I have just finished reading Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls about the filmakers of the 70's. It is a fascinating book and details many of the major figures of the day, including Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, Lucas and Spielberg. Biskind is very much of the view that these filmakers all had something important to say, about the world and Hollywood. He suggests that they failed in their attempts to change things much, and blames Lucas and Spielberg for ruining the types of films Hollywood was willing to make. There is no doubt that some crap has been produced over the past twenty years or more, but I would not lay so much of that on Spielberg and Lucas. You can also blame Bogdanovich, Coppola, Friedkin and Ashby among others for their inability to bring pictures in on time and within the budget. Cimino and Dennis Hopper can also be blamed.
But one of his major points seemed that many of the men of this generation wanted to be auteurs like the French New Wave directors, or Fellini and Bergman, Rosselini and Ozu. In fact, none of them really were. Coppola, Scorsese, Speilberg, or Lucas - none of them can really write a screenplay or work from original material. The one auteur that truly came out of that generation, never came west. Woody Allen stayed in New York and made his own works year after year, and in the process put together six different Best Director Nominations and one win for Annie Hall. Not too shabby. But then, when you put out a picture a year, you are bound to beat the odds once or twice.
In the end, Altman can stand in line with other great directors who never really got the recognition from the Academy that they deserved - Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese. That's a pretty good group to be in, little gold statue or no. Like I said in my picks post, I'm pleased to see him finally get some recognition. And frankly, the man's career is not over yet (surprising given his alcoholism and proclivity to burn bridges) so he may very well have one or two more great one's in him. Sometimes, the best artirts save their greatest work to the very end. Look at Henry Fonda. Never had a lot of support from Hollywood as far as nominations went. He received an Honorary Oscar in 1980 in recognition that he had been overlooked for so long. The very next year, he won Best Actor for On Golden Pond just five months before he died. In fact, I hope Altman does have that last great performance, just like another great actor who has never won but did receive the Honorary Oscar a few years ago - Peter O'Toole. One can hope. That is all.
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