“Serpico” (1973)
This sublimely gritty, extremely 1970s take on the true story of New York City cop Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) who blew the whistle on the corruption and graft going on within his own department and paid a heavy price for it, did get nominated for both Screenplay and Best Actor for Pacino. But the fact that not only did it not get a Best Picture nod the year that “A Touch of Class,” “American Graffiti” and eventual winner “The Sting” did (we’re not complaining about “The Exorcist” and “Cries and Whispers” making up the field), it also failed to pick up a nod for terminally undervalued directorSidney Lumet, is a noticeable oversight. The film is everything that Lumet’s style typifies: understated but totally compelling, a thrilling and muscular study of masculine codes of honor in crisis, and one of the best and most convincing whistleblower films ever made. But Lumet would continue to be unlucky when it came to Academy recognition — his five nominations (four for directing, one for screenplay) never brought him a statue (not even for the multi-awarded “Network“). Though the Academy more or less acknowledged the unfairness of his lot in 2005 when he received an honorary Oscar. (Our Lumet Retrospective).
“Days of Heaven” (1978)
If you knew that only two Terrence Malick films had been nominated for Best Picture, you might easily hazard a guess that “Days of Heaven” his gorgeous, magic-hour tale of destructive love and locust attacks, might be one. But in fact that honor (unconverted in both cases) belongs only to “The Thin Red Line” and “The Tree of Life” — both of which also netted Malick his only Directing nods, as well as a Screenplay nomination for the latter. And it wasn’t that this elegiac drama, the story of a penniless young farm laborer (Richard Gere) who persuades his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) to marry a wealthy, sickly farmer (Sam Shepard), only for the farmer to recover and then for the girl to find herself loving him too, went ignored entirely. Nestor Almendros‘ outstanding crepuscular photography won the Cinematography award that year, while costume, sound and Ennio Morricone’s score were all nominated. But while “Days of Heaven,” marking a profound progression from the director’s previous film “Badlands” (which was itself brilliant), could certainly have usurped the spot taken by Warren Beatty‘s enjoyable but slight “Heaven Can Wait,” the rest of the field, including “Midnight Express,” “Coming Home,” “An Unmarried Woman” and eventual winner “The Deer Hunter,” all seem like solid picks.
“Manhattan” (1979)
The interesting thing is how the beautifully shot “Manhattan”, the ne plus ultra example of just about every Woody Allen theme — a divorced TV writer (Allen) in a relationship with a much younger student (Mariel Hemingway) falls for his best friend’s mistress (Diane Keaton) — set in motion a pattern that has repeated ever since. After his Best Picture/Director/Screenplay success with “Annie Hall” Allen’s films have netted him a further six directing nods and a crazy 15 screenplay nominations, three of which he also won. But only two of his 38 post-“Annie Hall” films have been nominated for Best Picture (“Hannah and Her Sisters,” very deservedly, “Midnight in Paris,” not so much). So yes, over such a uniquely successful career, it’s hard to get too incensed that four-time Oscar winner Allen didn’t pick up a Best Film nod here (though it is certainly one of his very best) — until, that is, you realize what an odd year it was for the category. “Kramer vs Kramer” beat out the grandeur and brilliance of both “Apocalypse Now” and “All That Jazz,” and neither of the filler nominees “Norma Rae” and “Breaking Away” have enjoyed anything like the ongoing classic status afforded to Allen’s graceful, sad-funny Gershwin-inflected “Manhattan.”
“Full Metal Jacket” (1987)
There is no quicker shortcut to questioning the entire edifice of the Academy Awards than taking a quick look through their track record in reference toStanley Kubrick. As mentioned above (see “Spartacus” and “2001: A Space Odyssey“) Kubrick was colossally unlucky to never have won Best Director, but that some of his greatest films never even got nominated seems even more egregious. By 1987, you could have imagined the Academy would be dying to recognize him, even if it were a kind of legacy nod, and this film, his second last as it turned out, represented a great opportunity. Leaving behind experimental sci-fi and horror, “Full Metal Jacket” saw Kubrick turn his meticulous, icy intelligence on a dissection of the dehumanizing madness of the Vietnam war — and war dramas traditionally do well with the Hollywood establishment. But perhaps this bifurcated story, of a group of new recruits, including Matthew Modine‘s Joker and Vincent D’Onofrio’sindelible Private Pyle, pushed beyond the limits of humanity and sanity, first in training and then in combat, was simply too excoriating, too condemnatory and too extreme for the Academy. It only received one nomination, for screenplay, while the Best Picture category was filled with comfier fare like “Moonstruck,” “Hope and Glory,” “Broadcast News,” “Fatal Attraction” and eventual winner “The Last Emperor.”
“Do The Right Thing” (1989)
On the one hand, it’s hardly surprising that Spike Lee’s era-defining, revolutionary “Do The Right Thing” didn’t get more Academy love; since when has anything truly revolutionary really been embraced by an institution that is this invested in the status quo? And let’s remember this was 26 years before #OscarsSoWhite became a thing — indeed years before hashtags, twitter or any of the tools of today’s outrage culture were even developed, when the discourse was largely controlled by the industry anyway. But on the other hand, Lee’s film, even at the time, seemed to mark the beginning of a sea change that, had the Academy been even a tiny bit more prescient, or a tiny bit less institutionally racist, absolutely could have seen the film pick up more than rather desultory, token nods for Screenplay and Supporting Actor forDanny Aiello (notably the only white principal). It competed at Cannes, and picked up Picture and Director nominations at the Globes, but despite form, the Academy ensured that 1990 would live forever as a punchline: not only were “My Left Foot,” “Field of Dreams” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Dead Poets Society” all nominated instead, but “Driving Miss Daisy” won — a perfect snapshot of how Hollywood likes to view race.
