Awards presented March 20, 1952
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
An American in Paris. Colorful, with a lot of great Gershwin songs, but there's something heavy about the movie, which shows itself most particularly in the titular ballet.
... when it should have gone to ...
Delicious, dazzling thriller, with a brilliantly creepy Robert Walker as one of Hitchcock's suavest villains. And there's a smashing, nail-biting climax involving an unmoored merry-go-round. It merited only a nomination for Robert Burks's cinematography, though Hitchcock surely deserved one, and the film itself is certainly far more deserving than the long-forgotten
Decision Before Dawn and the hackneyed pseudo-biblical
Quo Vadis. A case could well be made for
A Streetcar Named Desire,
A Place in the Sun, or the curiously unnominated
The Africa Queen as the year's best picture, but given the Academy's steady disregard of Hitchcock's achievements (and the fact that those other films mopped up in the acting, directing, and writing categories) I'll go with
Strangers.
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