The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
 |
| The Godfather, Part II |
Best Picture, 1974
Awards presented April 8, 1975
Apart from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was the planned conclusion to a trilogy of films, The Godfather, Part II is the only sequel to win a best picture Oscar. (No small distinction in an age when sequels have become so common that the title of the play The Madness of George III was changed to The Madness of King George when it was filmed, to keep people from thinking it was a sequel.) The first Godfather film had been so successful that few critics could resist comparing the two films, sometimes resulting in reviews that are embarrassingly off the mark, at least in hindsight. In The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "The only remarkable thing about Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather, Part II' is the insistent manner in which it recalls how much better his original film was." Almost no one shares Canby's opinion today, the consensus being that as a triumph of performance, direction, and design, Godfather II may even be the superior film, with a more complex narrative line and a darker and colder tone that advance the first film's tragic vision. The Academy certainly welcomed the sequel, giving Coppola the directing Oscar he missed out on with the first film, and rewarding Dean Tavoularis, along with Angelo Graham, for the production design, which had gone unnominated on the 1972 film. A technicality had ruled the memorable Nino Rota score ineligible on the first film, but this time Rota and Carmine Coppola took home Oscars. Still, Gordon Willis's eloquent cinematography remained unnominated, as did the editing team of Peter Zinner, Barry Malkin, and Richard Marks, which had been tasked with the intercutting of the flashback sequences into the main narrative of the film.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment