The nominees were ...
- Clarence Brown, The Yearling
- Frank Capra, It's a Wonderful Life
- David Lean, Brief Encounter
- Robert Siodmak, The Killers
- William Wyler, The Best Years of Our Lives
... when they should have been ...
- John Ford, My Darling Clementine
- Howard Hawks, The Big Sleep
- Alfred Hitchcock, Notorious
- Roberto Rossellini, Open City
- William Wyler, The Best Years of Our Lives
And the Oscar went to ...
 |
| Samuel Goldwyn, Harold Russell, and William Wyler with their Oscars for The Best Years of Our Lives |
My designated competitors -- Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, and Rossellini -- were all greater directors than Wyler, more given to expressing their individual vision and personality. But I have no reason not to give Wyler the award for what is perhaps his greatest film, the one film of his that does come from personal experience and the elaboration of a vision. As a wartime documentarian, Wyler had seen what war does to people, and The Best Years of Our Lives is eloquent in demonstrating what the aftermath of war can do to those who fought in it. It's worth comparing this film to the one for which Wyler won his previous Oscar, Mrs. Miniver, to see how experience clarified Wyler's vision, purged him of sentimentality. He had no direct experience of what the British were undergoing when he made Mrs. Miniver, and the result is candy-coated, a set of contrivances and clichés about stiff-upper-lip Brits. Best Years is by no means a perfect treatment of its subject -- it's a long way from the neorealism of Rossellini's Open City -- but it's a heartfelt one. Wyler would go on to win a third Oscar -- reverting to his role as studio craftsman for the rather shameless Ben-Hur -- and accumulate a record-setting twelve nominations for directing, plus two more as producer.
No comments:
Post a Comment