Not a word is spoken. Silence across the hall. You can feel the tension in the air, the expectation, the bitterness. Slowly, silently, everyone eagerly leans forwards to hear the most dreaded and anticipated sentence: “And the award goes to…”
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Whilst the awards season is months away, film writers everywhere have already begun the inevitable speculative reports of the winners, losers and overlooked. The awards season in film is like Christmas; early anticipated, emotional and essentially, disappointing. Who is in and who is out has already been pre-determined and it seems that this year, the pickings are somewhat slim. Following the bumper crop years we have had in recent film history, packed with contenders such as The Artist, 12 Years a Slave and Dallas Buyers Club, 2013-2014 has been somewhat more subdued. Early prediction lists have taken contenders from as far back in the year as February, a thing which is relatively unheard of in Oscar prediction lists. And whilst late contenders such as Interstellar and Gone Girl look set to bag a few awards, 2014 just doesn’t feel like it has been the year for awards.
How ironic, then, that this year has seen the release of masterful pieces such as 20,000 Days on Earth, Under the Skin and The Wind Rises. Whilst the work that is celebrated at this year’s award ceremonies will be undoubtedly justified, there will be a whole lot more that goes overlooked. This is hardly something new. Since the very inception of the film awards, the snub list has piled up and up. Although cinematic preference is undeniably arbitrary, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out when a specific film or actor should win an award. Rather than celebrating the winners, then, let’s take a look back to the underdogs of the awards season, the figureheads that unjustly went forgotten. Perhaps better loved than their winning counterparts, these films and actors are proof that there’s more to the awards season than just trophies.
Judy Garland never won an Oscar. Let’s just let that one sink in. She never won an Oscar. Here is the actress who gave us The Wizard of Oz, A Star is Born and Meet me in St. Louis. She gave nothing but sheer joy, she delighted millions with her lark-esque singing talents and yet never won anything from the Academy Awards. Whilst she was given an honorary Oscar in 1940, the victory felt more like an oversight than anything else. Like so many since, Judy Garland was one that the Oscars forgot. And for that, we loved her all the more.
Alfred Hitchcock was otherwise known as The Master of Suspense. And for good reason. Hitchcock was the king of the genre, building tension by merely omitting or including imagery in his films. Hinting at the presence of something more sinister, Hitchcock knew when to let things lie, to give his audiences just enough to leave them begging for more. Despite his comprehensive and varied filmography, he was never acknowledged by the Academy Awards for his work. In truth, this is somewhat of a sore spot in cinematic history and, like Garland, Hitchcock was awarded a gratuitous honorary Oscar in 1968. If struggling filmmakers should look to anyone for solace, then surely it should be Hitchcock, the man that went his own way and made the Oscars seem a glib and arbitrary affair.
Perhaps the Citizen Kane of all cinematic oversights, Citizen Kane lost out to How Green Was My Valley for the award of Best Picture in 1942. Whilst John Ford was undoubtedly one of the cinematic greats, Welles’ Citizen Kane undeniably blew his film out of the water. Using media mogul William Randolf Hearst as his unofficial inspiration for the film, Welles earned the distrust of all Hearst media outlets and a number of movies theatres for his less than sympathetic portrait of the business giant. It gets a little brighter though; not only does Citizen Kane frequently top international film polls as the best film of all time but also, has earned its own phraseology, used to represent the best of the best.
Jack Nicholson got his crazy loco on in Stanley Kubrick’s rendition of The Shining, simultaneously terrifying audiences everywhere and creating some of the most parodied scenes of all time. Whilst many believe that his performance in the film was somewhat overblown, it is undeniable that Nicholson created the character with gusto and verve and made his mark on cinematic history. Nicholson’s Jack Torrance was the perfect balance of banal and insane, in his characterisation, he created the perfect recipe for a full-on bloody killing spree. And yet the Academy thought otherwise. Whilst other figures were granted afterthought Oscars, Jack Nicholson was never even nominated for his role in The Shining.
Most recently, Spike Jonze’s beautifully toned-down film Her was overlooked. Whilst the film was granted a number of Academy nominations, its star, Joaquin Phoenix was snubbed in his leading role. Most painful was perhaps the film score which, whilst nominated for an award, lost out to Steven Price’s score for Gravity. Whilst Price’s soundtrack was dramatic and huge in sound, it lacked the musical intelligence of William Butler and Owen Pallett’s Her. What Gravity’s soundtrack had in sheer volume, Her’s had in intricate melodic detail and gently understated instrumentation.
If we can learn anything from the Academy Awards, it’s that they are highly arbitrary and essentially meaningless. What lasts in cinematic history and what shapes the face of cinema is often overlooked by the Academy, marching to its own tune. What is apparent, though, is that movie lovers everywhere will continue to become increasingly incensed by the oversights the award seasons make, every year campaigning against their choices. Whilst the winners of the following Academy season will go down in film history, so too will an even longer list of other films, those who are heralded by millions of other films fans. Increasingly, we are turning away from the awards season and looking to film festivals for the true winners on film.