Love of movies illuminates the Oscar race

Cinemimi [Saturday, February 25, 2012]
Two tributes to the joys of early cinema are the front-runners for prizes, but neither could have been made in Hollywood, says David Gritten.
There’s a pleasing symmetry and circularity about the two films leading the pack as we contemplate the Academy Awards. Martin Scorsese’s 3D adventure Hugo, with 11 nominations, is expected to win a handful of technical awards. The black-and-white silent film The Artist is close behind with 10 nominations, but is likely to pull off the night’s high-profile victories: best film, best actor, best director.

It’s a pleasing coincidence that of all the films under consideration, these two should stand out on Oscar night. They have something in common, of course: both are tributes to cinema’s past history. In their different ways, they celebrate the magic of movies – and one suspects voters have swung behind these titles so enthusiastically because right now magic seems a scarce commodity in films, especially Hollywood studio films.

Hugo is far more than a story about an orphaned boy living secretly within the walls of a railway terminal in Thirties Paris: it’s also an affectionate homage to the pioneering films of Georges Méliès, who in the late 19th century devised many visual tricks and illusions that, in far more sophisticated form, film-makers still employ today.

So here’s Martin Scorsese, an American director, tipping his hat to the role of the French in shaping early cinema. With The Artist, a paean of praise to Hollywood’s early silent era, French director Michel Hazanavicius inadvertently returns the compliment.

A lover of silent movies, Hazanavicius is in a long line of French film-makers who revere American films from their earliest days. Even when talkies came in, the French gazed across the Atlantic attentively: remember, for instance, the young guns in France’s New Wave of the Sixties who loved the style and swagger of American genre movies and revered the directors who created masterpieces (sometimes unsung) from within the industrial process of the Hollywood dream factory.
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Scorsese and Hazanavicius, then, have unwittingly conspired to make a claim for movie magic. Tellingly, they have done so with no help from Hollywood studios. If The Artist sweeps all before it tomorrow, it will be the second year in a row, after Britain’s The King’s Speech, that a non-American film has triumphed at the Oscars.

The thread linking these two last titles is Harvey Weinstein, whose company distributed them in America, and made them seem Oscar-worthy to the world. Brash and volatile, Weinstein works outside the studio system, but he’s like an old-style Hollywood mogul: he knows a film that will seize the public imagination when he sees one. It sometimes seems Weinstein is the last man standing in terms of keeping classic Hollywood values alive.

However the Academy Awards go, it’s a fair bet we’ll be seeing the oldest actor ever to win an Oscar. That record is held by Jessica Tandy, who was 80 when she was named best actress in 1989 for playing the title role in Driving Miss Daisy.

Christopher Plummer is the hot favourite to triumph as best supporting actor for his role as a gay septuagenarian in Beginners. He’s been acting for more than 50 years, he’s 82 years old and he’s come a long way since playing Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music.

Curiously, if Plummer fails to win this category, an even older actor could nab the Oscar: the legendary Swede Max von Sydow. He plays an elderly mute man in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Von Sydow will be 83 in April; he’s eight months older than Plummer.

Ever since last year’s awards, the question has been raging: could anyone do a worse job of hosting the Oscars than the deeply unfunny Anne Hathaway and the clearly bored James Franco?

Someone could, of course, but thankfully Eddie Murphy (yes, Mr Daddy Day Care) withdrew after being announced. Time for an old pro to come to the rescue, and I predict Billy Crystal will do a first-rate job.

But there’s clearly been an attempt to lighten the long, long evening with humour from awards presenters: the cast of Bridesmaids will take the stage in some capacity, Kermit and Miss Piggy will be dishing out an Oscar – and I can’t believe Uggie the dog from The Artist won’t play a part in the overall levity.

It won’t be a great night for the British in the main categories. Gary Oldman, deserving though he is, would be a shock best actor. Look instead to the animation categories: the luscious Chico and Rita has British producers, while that delightful short A Morning Stroll, victorious in the Baftas, could well repeat the trick tomorrow.