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Hitchcock

13 Mar 2003 by Matthew Linderman

I never knew this: Alfred Hitchcock, a five-time nominee, never won an Oscar for directing.

15 comments so far (Post a Comment)

13 Mar 2003 | Joshua Kaufman said...

Truly criminal.

13 Mar 2003 | Don Schenck said...

It's because he was gay.

Wasn't he gay?

13 Mar 2003 | to ashamed to post my name said...

No, he was just a freak. I read someplace that in his office he kept a coffin and would hide in it while his assistant would bring a young girls into the room. They would naturally peer into the open coffin and he would jolt to life and masturbate to their screams of fright.

13 Mar 2003 | Steve said...

No, Hitch wasn't gay.

He only won one best picture award, too, for "Rebecca." Which, if memory serves, was his first US picture.

In the 60s at some point he got the guilt, er, Lifetime Achievement Oscar, when people realized that they'd kinda screwed up by never giving him an award before.

13 Mar 2003 | Toby said...

Hey, that's the Gestalt oscar. The body of work is greater than the some of the individual parts. Besides, Oscars don't go to the best person, they go to the most popular one -- although the two often coincide.

15 Mar 2003 | Fellow Filmguy said...

The problem with art citicism is, and I plan to write about this subject myself sometime soon, that it's impossible to judge the greatness of a film (or a novel or painting for that matter) unless the work can be seen out of the context of the current culture. Of course, this is impossible, since the critics and the audiences live in the current culture. Who knows, fifty years from now we may be lookings back and hailing the brilliance of Juana Man.

But awards have to go to someone, and the powers that be end up giving awards to work that is good and that fits certain criteria. In the case of movies, it's what the movie ISN'T that counts - isn't a comedy, isn't adventure or action. Let's face it. In twenty or thirty years people may remember the Matrix, but nobody will remember American Beauty. Still, the Matrix has exactly a snowballs chance in L.A. of getting an Oscar for best director.

Hitch faced a similar problem in that he worked in genres considered low at the time - horrors and thrillers. Spielberg experienced the same snubbing early on and is only now getting the recognition he deserves for, you know, changing the entire entertainment industry.

What's a filmmaker to do? Accept awards for what they are, pats on the back. If someone gets patted, it doesn't mean everyone else gets kicked.

17 Mar 2003 | Paperhead said...

It's also a question of what Hitchcock lost out to, isn't it?

1940 John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath
1944 Leo McCarey, Going My Way
1945 Billy Wailder, The Lost Weekend
1954 Elia Kazan, On The Waterfront
1960 Billy Wilder, The Apartment

There's some pretty great films and directors to lose out to there.

Altman and Kubrick are bigtime Oscar losers too, and others: Ridley Scott, Kurosawa, Bergman, Lumet . . . big long list . . .

17 Mar 2003 | Paperhead said...

Wailder = Wilder
There's = That's

damn my fingers today

17 Mar 2003 | Steve said...

Good points regarding the cultural context of the film, Filmguy. Using Hitch as an example, "Vertigo" was a commercial flop when it was released, and it wasn't reviewed very well, either. Today, it's pretty widely regarded as his masterwork.

There are some truly awful films and performances that get Oscars. Which is fine; they simply award what's in a given year. And it's not real often that, in the culture of the day, that the Academy makes enormous mistakes (although it does happen - e.g. "Titanic", which is an embarassing film now, and was five minutes after it went through its hype, beating out "LA Confidential", which was a truly brilliant film).

A few other handy Oscar rules: Actors from great ensemble casts will rarely get nominated, let alone win (see "LA Confidential" as an example; Crowe, Pierce, Spacey, Cromwell all deserved recognition, yet none got nominated). An actor performing competently but not great in a "serious" role after a career of non-serious roles gets an award (again, see "LA Confidential" and Kim Basinger). Same rule applies to directors (see Spielberg, "Schindler's List"). Also, awards are guaranteed for actors, and often movies, portraying disabled or mentally handicapped characters (that such horrible, treacly crap as "Forrest Gump" ever won anything is proof that the process is horribly flawed).

18 Mar 2003 | Martin Conaghan said...

Neither did Kubrick, which is an even bigger crime in my opinion.

07 Jul 2003 | Jeremy Sweat said...

I am looking fro a job as a wailder

05 Dec 2003 | Al said...

Kubrick was good but to say he was better then Hitch is insane my man

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