Awards presented March 31, 1981
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
Ordinary People. Intelligently directed by Robert Redford, but Alvin Sargent's screenplay is a formulaic domestic drama that relies more on the performers (Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Judd Hirsch, Timothy Hutton) than on any real insights into the characters they play. The film's central antithesis -- the psychiatrist (warm, sloppy, Jewish, male) vs. the mother (cold, meticulous, Protestant, female) -- is particularly obvious. Redford, Sargent, and Hutton won Oscars, and Moore and Hirsch were nominated.
... when it should have gone to ...
An ironic biopic, avoiding the clichés of the genre while at the same time alluding to those clichés, as well as to those of boxing movies such as Golden Boy and Champion. It's clearly a movie made by a man in love with movies, which may explain why film critics praise it so highly. At the end of the decade, it took first place in a critics' poll to name the best films of the eighties -- admittedly not a decade with a lot of high points. It's an easy film to admire, made with consummate skill by director Martin Scorsese, cinematographer Michael Chapman, and Scorsese's long-time collaborator, film editor Thelma Schoonmaker. And it has three terrific performances, all of which received nominations, by Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, and Joe Pesci. De Niro and Schoonmaker won the Oscars they deserved, but Scorsese and his film didn't, and the screenplay by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin was not nominated. It's a hard film to love, given that it's about a most unlovable man -- a crude, brutal fighter who becomes tolerable only after he self-destructs. But when viewed alongside the winner, Ordinary People, it's clear that the Academy made a serious mistake.
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