(Films released from August 1, 1927 through August 1, 1928 were eligible.)
The division of the directing category into comedy and drama was abandoned by the Academy after this year.
The nominees were ...
(Comedy Picture)
(Dramatic Picture)
... when they should have been ...
Lewis Milestone, Two Arabian Knights. Milestone's Oscar two years later for All Quiet on the Western Front is the one that really counts. The comedy direction would be abolished after this year, leaving Milestone its sole winner. The film itself, starring Louis Wolheim (whom Milestone would use to more lasting effect in All Quiet) and William Boyd (yes, he'd become Hopalong Cassidy), was almost lost, but has been restored.
Frank Borzage, 7th Heaven. Borzage would win another Oscar three years later for Bad Girl, but his films aren't much remembered today, perhaps because they tend to be on the romantically mushy side. He also made the mistake of going to work in the 1930s for MGM, where directors were under the heavy thumb of producers and were usually unable to develop their individual strengths.
... when it should have gone to ...
 |
| F.W. Murnau |
Movies would not see the fluidity of Murnau's direction of the camera in Sunrise again until the studios mastered sound recording. But the fact that his first American films were box-office flops (and perhaps some squeamishness on the part of the studios about his homosexuality) made Hollywood nervous, despite his distinguished career in Germany. It also perhaps cost him a nomination for Sunrise. He went off to collaborate with the documentarian Robert Flaherty on Tabu in the South Pacific. But Flaherty didn't get along with Murnau and quit the film. Murnau returned to Hollywood and was about to begin his first sound work for Paramount when he was killed in an auto accident at the age of forty-three.
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