As long as we’re looking at trends in the history of the Oscars, there are a few other categories that I’d like to cast my eye over and talk a bit about. First, the big one: Best Picture. I remember a few years back when Green Book won, there was a lot of eye-rolling about what an obvious and safe choice it was. There were comparisons to Driving Miss Daisy and Crash; the point of these comparisons was that those films were also ham-fisted treatments of the race issue in America, calculated to appeal to the older, mostly white Academy demographic. As it happens, these two Best Picture winners more or less bookended an era in which the award tended to go to films that were: 1) expensive; 2) “glossy”; 3) dramas; 4) set in the past; 5) dealt with some social issue such as racism. Of the 17 winners during this era, only three have a contemporary setting (The Silence of the Lambs, American Beauty, Crash), while The Return of the King takes place in a fantasy setting that never was. The Silence of the Lambs is the only one of those films that doesn’t fit into any of the categories given above.
Winners before Driving Miss Daisy were less issue-driven, but the Academy had long been keen on historical dramas, with 1980s wins for The Last Emperor, Platoon, Out of Africa, Amadeus, Gandhi and Chariots of Fire. You may also note that a lot of these films are very dull. Aside from discussions of past Oscar ceremonies, when’s the last time you heard anyone bring any of these up?
The 1970s and the New Hollywood have been much discussed; I won’t bother going over what great films The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The French Connection, Annie Hall and Kramer vs. Kramer are. What I’m more interested in is the way that, from Wings winning the inaugural award in 1928 through to the emergence of the New Hollywood in the late 1960s, there was really no consensus as to what an Oscar-worthy film looked like. Wings was the only silent film to win, unless you count The Artist; in subsequent years, the award would go to musicals, war epics, Westerns, comedies – both the breezy, low-budget kind and the big-budget follies of the 1950s and 60s – and self-consciously literary efforts. All of these genres, and others, would be mostly or entirely shut out in later years.
I think it’s heartening that, in recent years, we’ve actually started to go back to a paradigm where any type of film might win the Oscar. Last year’s Everything Everywhere All At Once managed a win while being: science fiction; action; comedy; female-focused; and Asian-focused. You wouldn’t even see it nominated twenty years earlier. Other types of recent winner have included low-key, low-budget efforts (Nomadland, CODA); LGBT stories (Moonlight, Everything Everywhere All At Once); foreign films (Parasite) and a sci-fi fantasy about bestiality (The Shape of Water).
But it’s not all heartening. Just as the diversity of genre for Best Picture and Best Song winners comes as a breath of fresh air, the leading acting categories are becoming stultifying. When Cillian Murphy won this year for playing famous scientist Oppenheimer, he was up against (among others) Bradley Cooper as famous composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein and Colman Domingo as famous political activist Bayard Rustin. Over in the Best Actress category, Emma Stone beat out Lily Gladstone as famous murder survivor Mollie Burkhart, Annette Bening as famous swimmer Diana Nyad and Carey Mulligan as famous actress/Leonard Bernstein wife Felicia Montealegre.
Other Best Actor and Best Actress wins in recent years have included portrayals of famous televangelist Tammy Faye Baker; famous father/manager Richard Williams; famous actress Judy Garland; famous queen, Queen Anne; famous singer Freddie Mercury; famous prime minister Winston Churchill; famous prime minister Margaret Thatcher; famous frontiersman Hugh Glass; famous scientist Stephen Hawking; famous businessman Ron Woodroof; famous President, Abraham Lincoln; and famous King, King George VI. There’s a pattern here, and I must say I’m not too pleased with it. Notice also how many of these figures are from the 20th Century and have received extensive media coverage. While nailing an impersonation of a well-known star or politician is certainly an impressive talent, I’m not sure it deserves recognition above the way that an actor collaborates with a writer and director in actually creating a character, when they’re playing someone fictional.
And it’s not as if this fetish for portraying real figures is new. The third-ever Best Actor award went to George Arliss as famous Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli; in 1936 the ninth Best Actress statue awarded went to Luise Rainer as famous stage performer Anna Held. But in recent years it’s not unusual for the category to be three-fifths real people. In fact, it’s become rare and refreshing to see zero real figures represented. In 2018, Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born was the only nominee not playing a real figure. It’s getting ridiculous, and it’s just one of many factors making the wins in the Supporting categories far more interesting performances.