Awards presented March 2, 1944
At the previous year's presentation ceremony, David O. Selznick had to read out twenty-nine names of the nominees for best documentary, so the Academy decided to do something about that. This was still the era of the "propagandoc," the film made to advance the war effort. So the Academy announced a "preliminary list" of documentaries eligible for the award, but then pared the list to "official nominations." It also divided the category into short films and feature-length films for the first time. There were eight films in the preliminary long-list of feature documentaries, and twenty-one in the short film division. These were reduced to five feature nominees and seven short-film nominees.
The nominees were ...
(Feature)
- Baptism of Fire, United States Army
- The Battle of Russia, United States Department of War Special Service Division
- Desert Victory, British Ministry of Information
- Report From the Aleutians, United States Army Pictorial Service
- War Department Report, United States Office of Strategic Services Field Photographic Bureau
(Short subject)
- Children of Mars, RKO Radio
- December 7th, United States Navy
- Plan for Destruction, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Swedes in America, United States Office of War Information Overseas Motion Picture Bureau
- To the People of the United States, Walter Wanger, producer
- Tomorrow We Fly, United States Navy Bureau of Aeronautics
- Youth in Crisis, The March of Time
And the Oscar went to ...
(Feature)
Desert Victory, British Ministry of Information.
The British campaign in North Africa against Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps, with a focus on the battle of El Alamein. The documentary, relying on footage captured from the Germans, was directed by Roy Boulting and David MacDonald, and is narrated by J.L. Hodson from his own script.
(Short subject)
December 7th, United States Navy.
This dramatization of the attack on Pearl Harbor exists in several versions: The original theatrical version was thirty-four minutes long. The one submitted for the Academy Award was twenty minutes long. A "restored version" has assembled all the footage, some of it cut by the military censors because it was too sympathetic to the Japanese-Americans of Hawaii, into an eighty-two minute cut. Produced by John Ford and directed by Ford and cinematographer Gregg Toland, with a somewhat melodramatic narration, partly written by Budd Schulberg, by James K. McGuinness and Irving Pichel. The cast includes Walter Huston, Harry Davenport, and Dana Andrews. Professionally, if not a little too slickly, done, with music by Alfred Newman. Editor Robert Parrish smoothly combined newsreel and staged footage.
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