My Oscar Picks, Part 5: 1956-1960

Last year I wrote several posts comparing Oscar winners in the major categories with my own choices in the same categories for the years 1934-1955. (If you're interested in checking them out, they cover the years 1934-1939, 1940-1944, 1945-1949, and 1950-1955.) This year I'm going to continue with two more installments. As I wrote last year, these are strictly personal choices based on what I would have voted for. I chose only from among the actual nominees, and although I have seen most of the nominated films and performances, I can't claim to have seen absolutely every single one of them. Often the choice was a difficult one to make, and in truth I would have been just as satisfied with my second or even third choice. For each year, I've also noted what I felt to be the gravest oversight in the nominees, at times another difficult choice to make, as each year it seems that several worthy pictures, directors, and actors are neglected in favor of obvious mediocrities. For lists of all the nominees, CLICK HERE for a link to the Official Academy Awards Database.


1956

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: Around the World in 80 Days
My Pick: Giant

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: George Stevens, Giant
My Pick: George Stevens, Giant

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Yul Brynner, The King and I
My Pick: Kirk Douglas, Lust for Life

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Ingrid Bergman, Anastasia
My Pick: Ingrid Bergman, Anastasia

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Anthony Quinn, Lust for Life
My Pick: Anthony Quinn, Lust for Life

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind
My Pick: Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Winner: La Strada
My Pick: La Strada

After giving the best picture award to a "little picture," Marty, the previous year, the Academy finished the decade by giving the prize exclusively to expensively produced spectacles. In some cases these awards were actually deserved, but as enjoyable as it is, I don't think Around the World in 80 Days was the best picture of 1956. Actually, I wasn't thrilled by any of the best picture nominees this year. My own choice for best picture, Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life, wasn't nominated. I went with what was essentially the least offensive nominee, Giant, and its director, George Stevens, not for artistic inspiration but for the sheer engineering feat of putting the picture together.

Yul Brynner is an actor I have never been able to respond to, and I find his performance in The King and I just plain annoying. For me the only possibility in this field was Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life, and I still find it incomprehensible that Brynner, not Douglas, took home the Oscar. I went with the Academy's endorsement of Ingrid Bergman's return to Hollywood in Anastasia as well as its choices in the supporting categories. This was the first year the award for foreign language film was a competitive one. Even though the convoluted nominating process in this category often results in a weak field with many of the best foreign films of the year getting left out, the Academy got it right this year, giving the first competitive award for best foreign language film to Federico Fellini's La Strada. Biggest omission: Lust for Life—for best picture, director, and (incredibly) cinematography.


1957

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: The Bridge on the River Kwai
My Pick: The Bridge on the River Kwai

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai
My Pick: David Lean, The Bridge on the River Kwai

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai
My Pick: Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Joanne Woodward, The Three Faces of Eve
My Pick: Joanne Woodward, The Three Faces of Eve

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Red Buttons, Sayonara
My Pick: Arthur Kennedy, Peyton Place

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Miyoshi Umeki, Sayonara
My Pick: Elsa Lanchester, Witness for the Prosecution

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Winner: The Nights of Cabiria
My Pick: The Nights of Cabiria

Except for the supporting actor and actress awards, I concurred with the Academy's choices this year. The Bridge on the River Kwai and its director, David Lean, had little competition. The Academy seems to like rewarding comic actors for getting serious and glamorous actresses for getting plain, but this year's award to Alec Guinness for his uncharacteristically serious turn in Bridge was a well-deserved one. Actors who might have given him real competition—Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men (the third year in a row he was overlooked, after Mister Roberts in 1955 and The Wrong Man in 1956), Burt Lancaster's caustic J. J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, and Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory—weren't nominated, leaving Guinness the standout in a weak field.

Likewise, Joanne Woodward had no serious competition as best actress for her breakthrough performance in The Three Faces of Eve, just the kind of career-making performance by a young actress the Academy loves. I liked the award-winning supporting performances in Sayonara by Red Buttons and especially Miyoshi Umeki—for me they were the best things in the movie—but I preferred veterans Arthur Kennedy and Elsa Lanchester. For the second year in a row a Fellini movie, The Nights of Cabiria, one of his most likable, featuring a brilliant performance by his wife Giulietta Masina, got the best foreign language film award. Since this is a movie I have a particular fondness for, I certainly won't quarrel with that choice. Biggest omission: Paths of Glory for best picture, director, actor (Kirk Douglas) and supporting actor (Adolphe Menjou, George Macready).


1958

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: Gigi
My Pick: Gigi

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: Vincente Minnelli, Gigi
My Pick: Vincente Minnelli, Gigi

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: David Niven, Separate Tables
My Pick: Sidney Poitier, The Defiant Ones

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Susan Hayward, I Want to Live!
My Pick: Susan Hayward, I Want to Live!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Burl Ives, The Big Country
My Pick: Burl Ives, The Big Country

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Wendy Hiller, Separate Tables
My Pick: Wendy Hiller, Separate Tables

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Winner: Mon Oncle
My Pick: Mon Oncle

Again I pretty much agreed with the Academy, seconding its choices in all but one category. I like musicals, and I don't think anyone made them better than MGM did in the 1940s and 1950s. Gigi is one of the best, a concise and beautifully directed film. Its large number of nominations (nine) and wins (nine, a record at the time) doesn't surprise me; only the failure of Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold to get nominations in the supporting acting categories does. For best actor I went with Sidney Poitier's powerful performance in Stanley Kramer's interracial version of The 39 Steps over David Niven's pathetic "silly ass" in Separate Tables, for me another example of an old-timer's "career achievement" Oscar trumping a more deserving performance by a less well-known young actor. That Tony Curtis also was nominated for the same film didn't help Poitier's chances, and although Hollywood doted on social issue movies, it's also entirely possible that the Academy felt it was still a bit too soon to acknowledge racial injustice with more than a nomination.

Elizabeth Taylor made a strong impression as Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But Susan Hayward's performance in I Want to Live! as a character who was hard as nails but also one of life's victims, a woman whose resilience was undone by bad luck and disastrous taste in men, seemed a distillation of her entire screen persona, and hers was the performance I chose. Burl Ives gave a wonderful performance in The Big Country and an even better one in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Together, these left little doubt about the most deserving nominee for supporting actor. The great Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables, who gave the best performance in that movie, was likewise clearly the most deserving choice for supporting actress. Jacques Tati's gentle but pointed satire on modernity, Mon Oncle, had little competition for best foreign language film. Biggest omission: Vertigo for best picture, director, actor (James Stewart) and supporting actress (Barbara Bel Geddes).


1959

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: Ben Hur
My Pick: Room at the Top

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: William Wyler, Ben Hur
My Pick: Jack Clayton, Room at the Top

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Charlton Heston, Ben Hur
My Pick: James Stewart, Anatomy of a Murder

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Simone Signoret, Room at the Top
My Pick: Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Hugh Griffith, Ben Hur
My Pick: Arthur O'Connell, Anatomy of a Murder

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Shelley Winters, The Diary of Anne Frank
My Pick: Shelley Winters, The Diary of Anne Frank

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Winner: Black Orpheus
My Pick: Black Orpheus

I found little to agree with in the choices of the Academy this year. William Wyler apparently decided to become the new Cecil B. DeMille with his remake of the silent classic Ben Hur. The Academy must have liked the movie's combination of pageantry and piety, for it broke the record for Oscar wins set just the year before by taking home eleven of them. Any of the other nominees would have been a better choice, but I went for the British film Room at the Top, with its trenchant view of the postwar evolution of the deeply ingrained British class system, and also its director, Jack Clayton. Ben Hur even swept Charlton Heston along to a best actor win on his only nomination ever. I would have voted instead for James Stewart's folksy but shrewd defense lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder, a relaxed and charming performance by an actor still at the top of his form twenty-five years after his first credited part.

Simone Signoret, hardly a Hollywood insider, must have been a surprise winner for her touching performance in Room at the Top, the first ever best actress winner in a British film. But I'm a huge fan of Audrey Hepburn, who gave the best of her infrequent dramatic performances in The Nun's Story. The total investment of herself in this role is obvious every moment she is on screen. George C. Scott was nominated as supporting actor for his typically showy performance in Anatomy of a Murder, but I preferred Arthur O'Connell's quieter performance in the same picture. I did agree with the choice of Shelley Winters as best supporting actress for her shrill Mrs. Van Daan and the gorgeous Brazilian film Black Orpheus as best foreign language film. Biggest omission: North by Northwest for just about anything it was eligible for, including best picture, director, actor (Cary Grant), actress (Eva Marie Saint), supporting actor (James Mason).


1960

BEST PICTURE
The Winner: The Apartment
My Pick: The Apartment

BEST DIRECTOR
The Winner: Billy Wilder, The Apartment
My Pick: Billy Wilder, The Apartment

BEST ACTOR
The Winner: Burt Lancaster, Elmer Gantry
My Pick: Trevor Howard, Sons and Lovers

BEST ACTRESS
The Winner: Elizabeth Taylor, BUtterfield 8
My Pick: Deborah Kerr, The Sundowners

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The Winner: Peter Ustinov, Spartacus
My Pick: Peter Ustinov, Spartacus

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
The Winner: Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry
My Pick: Janet Leigh, Psycho

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Winner: The Virgin Spring
My Pick: The Virgin Spring

How could I argue with the choice of The Apartment and Billy Wilder for best picture and director? Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if the movie had done an It Happened One Night and taken all the major awards. Burt Lancaster's best performances manage to strike the right balance between flamboyance and restraint. Elmer Gantry was one of his most garish efforts—Acting with a capital A, just the kind of show-off performance the Academy loves. I would have been satisfied with a win by Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer or Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. But I've always had great admiration for Trevor Howard as the brutish father in Sons and Lovers, to my mind the most memorable thing (along with the Oscar-winning b&w cinematography by Freddie Francis) in a fine movie that tied with The Apartment for best picture in the New York Film Critics Circle awards.

In BUtterfield 8 Elizabeth Taylor gave an earnest performance that looked all the better for being in a picture that was, in a word, terrible. But even Liz considered her Oscar a sympathy award, an overreaction to her near-death experience from pneumonia and an atonement for Hollywood's rejection of her over the affair with Eddie Fisher. Shirley MacLaine was great in The Apartment, but I can't see giving her an award without also giving one to Jack Lemmon; that's how closely these performances seem linked to me. For best actress I would have voted to give Deborah Kerr her long overdue Oscar for doing what she did best on screen—enduring nobly without losing her cool—in The Sundowners. Peter Unstinov was hardly subtle in Spartacus (was he ever?), but the unimpressive field of nominees left him the default choice. For best supporting actress—Janet Leigh. Nothing more need be said. An Ingmar Bergman film won as best foreign language film for the first time. The Virgin Spring isn't one of his absolute greatest, but it's still an excellent, meticulously directed movie. Biggest omission: Alfred Hitchcock made his third masterpiece in three years and did receive a nomination for best director, but Psycho was glaringly overlooked for best picture, best actor (Anthony Perkins), and best supporting actor (Martin Balsam).