Citizen Kane
a
film by Orson Welles released through RKO Radio Pictures in 1941
In any year, the film that wins the Academy Award for Best Picture
reflects the Academy's preferences for that year. Even if its members look back and suffer
anxious regret at their choice of How
Green Was My Valley, that doesn't mean they were wrong. They can't be wrong. It's not everyone else's opinion that
matters, but the Academy's. Mulling over
the movies of 1941, the Academy rejected Citizen
Kane. Perhaps they resented Orson
Welles's arrogant ways and unprecedented creative power. Maybe they thought the film too
experimental. Maybe the vote was split
between Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon, both pioneering in
their Film Noir flavor.
Or they may not
have seen the film at all since it was granted such limited release as a
result of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst's threats to RKO. Nobody knows, and it doesn't matter. Academy members can't be forced to vote for
the film they like best. Their biases
and political calculations can't be dissected.
To subject the Academy to such scrutiny would be impossible and
unfair. It's the Academy's awards, not
ours.
What the critics think
and what the public thinks makes no difference.
We've already got exhibitions like The Golden Globes and trivialities
like The People's Choice Awards. Every
interest group and faction has its prizes.
So why do the critics care? Why
do they on one day dismiss the Academy Awards as inconsequential and the day
after rip the Academy a new one for its gutless/bland/predictable choices,
decrying that instead of this movie, that one was picked? It’s because these awards were the first,
because they are the most glamorous, because no other movie award matters
except as a harbinger of the one that people will remember—the Oscar.
And it's arguable,
but an artist’s work is best judged by a body of his peers. After all, only they know firsthand the
obstacles to success.
An Academy Award
also engenders feelings of community spirit—it’s a recognition that, in spades,
a winner has arrived, that he belongs.
In fact, many presume that the reason Citizen Kane won its only Oscar (for Best Screenplay) was because
Welles's co-author was Hollywood's most lovable drunk, Herman J.
Mankiewicz. Welles lost for Director,
Actor, and Picture. He didn't
belong...and he never found a home in Hollywood, only making an occasional film
there, when he wasn’t circling the globe
scrounging up money to fund yet another quixotic project.
Occasionally the
Academy recognizes that it may have made a mistake, the reason behind the
majority of its Honorary Awards. Peter
O'Toole, Howard Hawks, Fred Astaire, Barbara Stanwyck, Harold Lloyd, Cary
Grant, Lillian Gish, Mickey Rooney, Gene Kelly, Kirk Douglas, Edward G.
Robinson, Stanley Donen, Akira Kurosawa, Blake Edwards, and Henry Fonda and
Paul Newman (before On Golden
Pond and The Color of Money,
respectively, made them back-to-back winners) had all been rejected or
ignored, and then, as the end was nigh, were belatedly celebrated.
Sometimes the
Academy, apparently, decides that one award wasn't enough, hence the life
achievement Oscars for Gary Cooper (in 1961) and Sidney Poitier (in 2002). And sometimes, it appears, the Academy
rethinks a performance from a year previous and awards that performance under
the guise of a new film (Joan Fontaine for Suspicion
a year after Rebecca [1940], and
Jimmy Stewart for The Philadelphia Story
[following Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939)]).
Especially before
Martin Scorsese won for The Departed
(2006), Academy watchers would recite the growing list of great actors,
actresses, and directors who never won a competitive Oscar as evidence that the
Academy was blind. Never mentioned in
such recitations of trivia is the concept that, each year, the Academy is
supposed to be rewarding that year’s
work. Also ignored is the possibility that
an artist is only outstanding in the aggregate or that in the years that the
performer really shone, others just happened to be a little better. The Academy can’t award everybody. The awards would mean nothing.
Along the same
lines, especially before Denzel Washington and Halle Berry scored at the 2002
ceremonies, the dearth of black winners was belabored incessantly. Somewhere along the line, maybe in the ’60s,
maybe in the ’70s, Hollywood stopped rejecting actors because of their color
(one hopes). (We, for the sake of
argument, will consider Hattie McDaniel’s win for Gone With The Wind as tokenism or a fluke.)
What was never
discussed was how one could prove that black actors were not getting a fair
shake. The truth is, even if a black
actor won every year it would not be evidence of fairness. Because if black actors are, each year,
considered on the merits, then there should be no problem losing or not getting
a nomination. Equality of opportunity is
what matters. What critics were pressing
for was, in reality, a free pass. The
critics wanted to award black actors, to atone for the sins of their
predecessors’ past exclusion. But then
the award would be meaningless, because it wouldn’t be earned, and the Oscars
would become, even more, a platform for political grandstanding.
Again, it's not for
us to decide whether the Academy (now numbering over 6,000 members) should
foster esprit-de-corps in it awards at the expense of artistic
excellence. (As if we could ever agree
on what that entails.) No, a movie is
not great because the Academy deems it so; nor are their awards bad because
they deny great films the imprimatur of legitimacy, seeming to, on occasion,
reject, out-of-hand, difficult bastard children.
These kids, though
rejected, manage well for themselves and are a gift to society, despite the
fact they were never given the chance to abide in the Academy's mansions of
idealized memory. Citizen Kane, and decades of frenzied interest in the Awards,
testify that the Oscars and great films can occasionally go separate ways to
the detriment of neither party.
And Orson Welles did
receive an Honorary Oscar for life achievement, in 1971. He didn’t show up.
Home ----ILLUMINED---- Links ----ILLUSIONS---- Contact