A Question About The Academy Awards (Best Picture/Best Director)

Cafe Society
1

Seeing as how the Academy Awards will be presented at the end of this month, this is the perfect time to ask this question.

Looking in standard reference guides, I note that, between the second* and the twenty-fifth presentation of the Academy Awards, 11 of the 24 Best Director award-winners did not direct the Best Picture winner.

However, during the last 50 Academy Awards, the Best Director did not direct the Best Picture only eight times.

Therefore, the question is this: Why did this change occur?

(* I am ignoring the first Academy Awards for two reasons: 1) There was a tie for Best Director, and 2) the Best Director Award was given out for accumulated work over a year, and not for an individual film.)

2

I would assume that it can be attributed to the campagning of the individual studios for individual films for Oscars.
Observe Miramax, who produces one “Best Picture/Best Director” film every year, and then actively campaigns for it.

3

I believe the rise of the auture theory of filmmaking had a substatial impact here. IIRC, this school of thought was recognized among French critics in the '50s, quickly gaining favor in the U.S. through the '60s. Francois Truffaut and Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice produced substantive written work on the subject at that time. Before this period, filmmaking was viewed as a highly collaborative effort with the director as a central, though not prominent, figure. The French critics promoted the idea that directors placed their own personal stamp on a work, regardless of what was on the page. The result was the notion of a “Fellini Film,” “Bergman Film”, or “Scorcese Film” where the director’s personal style transcended his material. Even formerly unrecognized “B-movie” directors such as John Ford and Harold Hawks received notice for their individual efforts from this group. Hitchcock was also considred a B-movie director until this view of filmmaking took hold.

The “auteur theory” has received its fair share of criticism, but it remains a fixture in film analysis.

4

Since when does the Academy care about good filmmaking? :smiley:

5

Fair point, no argument here.

6

No, and no.

At the first Academy Awards ceremony, there were separate awards for Directing (Comedy Picture) and Directory (Dramatic Picture). Ted Wilde won in the former category for the Harold Lloyd comedy Speedy, and King Vidor won in the latter category for The Crowd.

Vidor also directed The Patsy, which was released in April 1928, during the same eligibility year (August 1927—July 1928).

7

Although this year, they unusually didn’t have a Best Picture nominee.

8

Oh, they’re there, in a way. Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein are listed as Executive Producers of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. There wouldn’t be a LOTR trilogy without them (Jackson was quite right to thank them at the Golden Globes) and, of course, if they hadn’t signed off to New Line, there wouldn’t be a LOTR trilogy. It all worked out.

9

Sorry, but none of these directors were considered “B-movie” directors. They were definitely A-movie – big studios, big stars, solid budgets.

It was just that their work was overlooked by critics (though not by the academy in John Ford’s case) whose prejudice was that a movie had to be about Matters of Consequence to be any good. Ford, Hawks, and Hitchcock were usually just telling a story (though Ford would do a message film from time to time), and the reasonable concept that good storytelling is an art was overlooked.

10

I haven’t heard Harvey Weinstein tout too much about Lord of the Rings, but Miramax financed about a quarter of Master & Commander, so they are still in the Best Picture category even without Lord of the Rings.

11

The switchover occurred for more down-to-earth reasons than the rise of auteur theory, though that did play its part. The change was a result of the collapse of the studio system during the 60s and 70s, which radically weakened the creative role of the producer.

Back during the heyday of the studio system in the 1930s and 40s it was the producers who shaped and molded pictures: they not only picked the director, the material and the cast, but they also often supervised minutae such as costumes, wardrobe, and script details. The director was considered just one more cog in the machine–a talented cogs to be sure–and the machine was tended by the producer.

The most famous producer of this era was David O. Selznick, but there were many others who fit the role of the creative producer–Hal Wallis at Warner Brothers, for example.

The Best Picture Award is given to the producer. During the creative producer era, movies that were dominated by the producer tended to win Best Picture; those that were dominated by the director would win Best Director. Take 1940, for example: Selznick won Best Picture for Rebecca (the closest Hitchcock ever got to a non-honorary Oscar), while John Ford won for The Grapes of Wrath.

But from 1945-1964 the studio system fell apart for a variety of reasons, as stars and directors found it both easier and more profitable to form their own production companies. As the the studio system collapsed and stars and directors gained more power, the producer’s role shrunk accordingly: they were no longer creative supervisors, but just money men who managed the financial end of the project.

What you often see nowadays is the stars and/or the directors acting as producers along with a couple of more technically/financially oriented people. E.g. you’ll look at the credits and see “PRODUCED BY: Big Name Star, Big Name Director, and (two guys you’ve never heard of).”

So Best Director/Best Picture splits have become rarer, both because it’s far more common for directors to also be producers now than it was in the 30s and 40s (e.g. LOTR: Jackson is one of the producers) and because the creative producer has become virtually extinct … with, for better or worse, one prominent exception–Jerry Bruckheimer.