Predictions Friday: Out of the Past

The Oscar ceremony doesn’t happen until mid-March. It’s hard to believe that’s six months away.  We’re still in the “film festival” phase and at the moment it feels very … quiet. Hollywood continues to be in the throws of what could be seen as a second wave of the Black List, or the Red Scare. The Red Scare didn’t didn’t start to impact the Best Picture race, I don’t think, until Senator Joseph McCarthy began to whip up hysteria that spread through American culture.

Reading back through the career of Jose Ferrer, who was the first Latino actor to win Best Actor, for Cyrano, illustrates just how crippling the fear of Communism was back then, such that people just didn’t get work. They were shunned, even if they weren’t persecuted and publicly condemned. After Ferrer won the Oscar, he had to appear before the HUAC. They were put in a no-win situation where they could not plead the 5th and were asked to name names before a committee.  Whenever the government is involved in bringing citizens in front of a committee, you know you’re in the danger zone.

Ferrer was cleared but there has always been some disagreement as to why. Did he name names? Was his career ever the same again? No. He was caught in between worlds. He would potentially be shunned by the Left, as Elia Kazan was, for “cooperating” with the committee. But he would also be shunned for being a Latino actor, and shunned for potentially being thought of as having communist ties.

I bring this up because you can plainly see how the climate of fear inspired the most bland era for the Oscars, in my personal opinion. I’m sure others disagree. I happen to prefer the edgier, more interesting era of the Oscars that doesn’t really get going until the mid to late 60s. Here are the films that won during the McCarthy era. It started to become a moral panic when the Rosenbergs were convicted of being Russian spies – 1951 – and carried on through to 1960, even if the McCarthy hearings ended in 1954.

1950-All About Eve (#4 box office)
1951-An American in Paris (#10 box office)
1952-The Greatest Show on Earth (#1 box office)
1953-From Here to Eternity (#3 box office)
1954-On the Waterfront (#9 box office)
1955-Marty (box office N/A)
1956-Around the World in 80 Days (#2 box office)
1957-The Bridge on the River Kwai (#1 box office)
1958-Gigi (#5 box office)
1959-Ben-Hur (#1 box office)

The 1950s were about an artificial, normalized utopian vision of “typical Americana” of the Leave it to Beaver variety. The films that won Best Picture very much reflect that aspirational view, and even have a bonafide Biblical winner with Ben-Hur. This was the era of the sword and sandal epic, after all. It was Christianity influenced, which is partly why there was such an existential threat against Communism. Stalin persecuted and banned Christianity from the Soviet-Union. The deeply held faith that comprised the majority of Americans at the time was threatened in what would have been, to them, a terrifying way.

We’re living through something similar. First you have to picture the utopian vision of American life — which was, I think, America under Obama from 2008-2016. What did it represent? Inclusivity, progressive beliefs, a new kind of moral decency that has its roots in race and gender activism, where everyone gets a seat at the table. We worked so hard for so long to curate our language to purge it of anything offensive, etc. Trump represented an existential threat for a variety of reasons, and his rise has upended the Oscars themselves. I don’t want to get into a long thing about Trump but suffice it to say that the reaction to his rise has indirectly led to the Black List Hollywood is living through now.

I think, and I could be wrong, that we’re living through another 1950s era for the Best Picture race:

2020-Nomadland
2021-CODA

So far, these are not just aspirational films but films safely directed by women. The question is what will fulfill that need this year? There is just no way to tell. The Oscar race is fluid, not statis. CODA wasn’t the winner, I don’t think, until it won the SAG ensemble and a large group of people understood how good it felt to award it. We’re likely not going to know what that movie will be for several months.

Predicting the top ten will be somewhat easier than predicting the winner on a ten picture ranked-choice ballot. What people will want to vote for is what makes them feel good. What usually makes them feel good right now in 2022 is not identifying with some kind of box office champ or Directing King, like the days of old. But rather, if their vote is boosting someone who is marginalized. That makes for the kind of emotional highs voters often chase with their picks.

This is why, incidentally, that the critics and the Oscars are so closely aligned lately. They both have more or less the sam agenda when it comes to evaluating movies right now.

Funnily enough, this isn’t unlike how things were in the 1950s. Here are the New York Film Critics Best picture throughout that decade:

1950-All About Eve
1951-A Streetcar Named Desire
1952-High Noon
1953-From Here to Eternity
1954-On the Waterfront
1955-Marty
1956-Around the World in 80 Days
1957-The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958-The Defiant Ones
1959-Ben-Hur

Even THEY picked Ben-Hur. These critics and the Oscars did naturally shift as film criticism shifted, influenced by the more subversive French critics in the 1960s.  Many of their Best Picture winners still matched with Oscars through the 1960s, and certainly almost everything that won there was at the very least nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. But I think it would be safe to say that there was more alignment in the 1950s and more influence by New York on the Oscars in the 1960s and 1970s.

Their last two winners, after things were totally upended in 2020, were:

2020: First Cow
2021: Drive My Car

The National Board of Review’s last two movies:
2020: Nomadland
2021: The Power of the Dog

Los Angeles:
2020: Small Axe
2021: Drive My Car

National Society:
2020: Nomadland
2021: Drive My Car

Golden Globes Drama
2020: Nomadland
2021: The Power of the Dog

The only consistent theme here is the absence of white male directors and the films they made. So you might say, well these movies were the best of the year. Maybe they were. Maybe their wins were driven by something other than how good their movies were. Maybe the idea of who made them and why mattered more. Maybe the people, the voices behind the films added to the overall context of them.

Last year there was mass formation around Drive My Car, which did end up landing in both the Best Picture and Best Director race probably purely on the collective enthusiasm of the critics. The question to answer this year will simply be this: what film will cause mass formation this year among critics and why.

At least at the moment, I think we have two contenders for that:

Women Talking, written and directed by Sarah Polley
TAR, written and directed by Todd Field

To know how this is going to go, it’s necessary to follow the high status alpha voices in film criticism. The people whose reviews always send Film Twitter chasing them down to see what they thought. As with everything, not just any old person’s opinion matters. It’s like in The Devil Wears Prada where only Miranda’s opinion matters. Those names have definitely changed over the years that I’ve been doing this, that’s for sure.

The critics tend to lean into the high status ones and that is how we get to mass formation. We’ll be watching to see how that goes.

Just for the fun of it, I put down my predictions over at Gold Derby. Remember now, none of this actually means anything because we have not yet seen all of the films. But a few notes:

If you are predicting a Best Actor win for Brendan Fraser, you should also predict a Best Picture nomination for The Whale. Since I have Austin Butler predicted to win, I have Elvis in for Best Picture. But it’s hell-a tricky. Despite what films WIN our Best Picture lineup every year, Best Picture does still tend to reflect films with a male-centric lead. That is why, whenever possible, I leaned in that direction. So many of the films we have on offer this year are female driven.

Best Picture
Male-driven:
The Fabelmans
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
Glass Onion
Avatar
Elvis

Female driven:
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Women Talking
She Said
TÁR

My alts here would be: Top Gun, Empire of Light (female driven), Armageddon Time (male driven)

Best Director
Sarah Polley, Women Talking
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Damien Chazelle, Babylon
Todd Field, TÁR
Jim Cameron, Avatar

Actress
Michelle Yeoh, EEAAO
Cate Blanchett, TÁR
Margot Robbie, Babylon
Olivia Colman, Empire of Light
Viola Davis, The Woman King

Actor
Austin Butler, Elvis
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Colin Farrell, Banshees
Hugh Jackman, The Son
Diego Calva, Babylon

Supporting Actress
Janelle Monae, Glass Onion (Michelle Williams for The Fabelmans who is not yet on Gold Derby in this category)
Jessie Buckley, Women Talking
Claire Foy, Women Talking
Jamie Lee Curtis, EEAAO
Anne Hathaway, Armageddon Time

Supporting Actor
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans
Michael Ward, Empire of Light
Brad Pitt, Babylon
Brendan Gleeson, Banshees
Jeremy Strong, Armageddon Time

Adapted Screenplay
Women Talking
She Said
Close
Glass Onion
The Whale

Original Screenplay
The Fabelmans
Babylon
Banshees
TÁR
EEAAO

And that, my friends, was all she wrote, which is always too much.

We await the critics to see which film they anoint to kick off the mass formation in Phase One.