Best Picture, 1973

Awards presented April 2, 1974

The nominees were ... 

• American Graffiti 
• Cries and Whispers 
• The Exorcist 
• The Sting 
• A Touch of Class 

... when they should have been ... 

• American Graffiti 
• Cries and Whispers 
• Last Tango in Paris 
• Mean Streets  
• Sleeper 

And the Oscar went to ...
The Sting. Robert Redford and Paul Newman are well-known wizards of charm, and Robert Shaw radiates true menace as the villain. But their work is weighted down by George Roy Hill's leaden direction, which unaccountably earned him an Oscar. Ordinarily, we would be applauding the Academy's decision to give the best picture award to a lightweight caper comedy, because it usually overlooks them in favor of works of high seriousness. But The Sting is slick, mechanical, and hollow.

... when it should have gone to ...

Cries and Whispers

Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece is nobody's idea of a good time: a depiction of the working-out of the relationships of three sisters as one of them lies cancer-ridden on her deathbed. But it's an example of an artist working at the peak of his powers, in collaboration with four artists at the peak of theirs: actresses Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, and Harriet Andersson, and cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who won the Oscar. The comparisons often made to Chekhov and Edvard Munch are inevitable, but this is also unmistakably Bergman, uncompromising and reaching out to the limits of his art.