ARTS
Wednesday, February 15, 1989
The Michigan Daily
Page 8
40
Oscar
(de)nomination
For sale: The Academy Award for Best Picture
0
BY TONY SILBER
JVk
Featured above is one of the photos from the exhibit Racism and the
Law: The Scottsboro Case, showing at the Baker/Mandela Center.
'Just a little place'
Photos recall Scottsboro Case
Do you remember which film won the Best Picture
Oscar of 1976? It's a tough question, with a sad and
revealing answer. Three great films, All The President's
Men,Network, and Taxi Driver were nominated, but the
winner was Rocky. Why? Rocky was a good picture, a fun
picture, but it wasn't a "Best Picture." By winning, it
joined an exclusive group of the greatest films ever
produced, a group it didn't, and doesn't, belong in.
This isn't a bash session about how mad I was that
Rocky won; but it did represent an unpleasant change in
the criteria that is used in selecting this prestigious honor.
The selections for Best Picture chosen by the voting
members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences have lessened the credibility of the once-cov-
eted Oscar statuette in recent years. It's not the fault of the
Academy, however, that the films of the last ten to 12
years have been clearly inferior to the films of the early
1970s all the way back to the birth of the cinema in the late
nineteenth century. The writers are lazy, the directors are
too conservative, the producers are too scared of risks, r
and the studio executives only see the bottom line of
budget sheets. And the result is bad movies and bad Best
Pictures with few exceptions.
The downfall of motion picture quality in recent
years may be attributed to the economic situation in the
United States. The oil crisis in the mid-'70s began the
trend. The price of cellulose, the oil-based substance used
to make film,rose sharply. The Hunt brothers' attempt to
corner the silver market in the late '70s also caused prices
to skyrocket because silver is also a prime ingredient in-
cellulose. As a result of these events, budgets rose,
projects were scrapped, new, innovative filmmakers were squeezed out of the
industry, and executives scurried for cover.
But who needs big budget extravaganzas to make great films? The Acad-
emy, that's who. The most recent trend is to award Best Picture to the most
expensive picture. Money has replaced quality as the frame of judgement for
motion pictures, and this is the tragedy of the Best Picture. In eight out of the
11 years since Rocky won, the Best Picture has had the highest budget of the
five nominees. They are usually large scale films with budgets exceeding $30
1
4
million, like The Deer Hunter (1978), Chariots of Fire
(1981), Gandhi (1982), Amadeus (1984), Out of Africa
(1985), Platoon (1986), and The Last Emperor (1987).
With the exception of Deer Hunter and Amadeus, these
films did not deserve this honor, but due to their "bigness'
in budget and scope, they were easy to choose.
With the transformation of motion pictures into these
giant, generic, multi-million-dollar cinematic bonanzas,
the qualities that appeal to people have been lost. Patrick
Stockstill, a historian with the Academy, has an interesting
theory about the difference between the older films and
today's films. "I think people are more romantic than they
really want to say they are, so they respond to the older
films," he says. "Those films were more idealistic, the
basic human needs were better portrayed than they are
now." You can relate to Paul Scofield in A Man For All
Seasons (1966) and Robert DeNiro in The Godfather, Part
II(1974), but you feel as if you don't even know Willem'
Dafoe in Platoon (1986) or Robert Redford in Out Of
Africa (1985).
The genres of the Best Picture have also changed in
recent years. A comedy hasn't won since 1977 (Annie
Hall), a musical since 1968 (Oliver). The last Best Picture
to take place in America was in 1983 (Terms of Endear-
ment). What has happened to the era when all the nominees
were great films, when a prediction was nearly impossible,
when you stayed up till 12:30 in the morning to wait for the
big announcement? The drama of the ceremony itself has
vanished because the films of today don't have the magic,,
mystique, and personality that the older films did.
Today, the Academy will announce its nominees for
this year's Oscars and hopefully the trend of bland, big
budget winners will turn around. But the Motion Picture
Industry as a whole has to reform its system into something
resembling the studio system of the '30s, '40s, and '50s if it is to return to the
glory days of the great films.
It's a different world today than it was 50 years ago in 1939 when the
nominees for Best Picture were Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz,
Mr.Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Ninotchka, Goodbye Mr.
Chips, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, and Dark Victory. If this year's winner
is half as good as any of these, then things are looking up.
BY DONNA IADIPAOLO
Scottsboro's just a little place
No Shame is writ across its face
Its court, too weak to stand against a
mob,
Its people's heart, too small to hold a
sob
-Langston Hughes
MAYBE this photo exhibit doesn't
harness the usual artsy glare and pre-
tentions surrounding local BFA
shows. But then again, maybe
Hughes and others would think that a
certain unmatched expression lingers
in these photos.
Racism and The Law: The
Scottsboro Case is a historical photo
exhibit which captures the essence
and energy that arose during a
landmark protest opposing prejudice
and injustice.
Intended to reveal how the
Scottsboro Case fused together a
,multi-racial group of people, the
photos depict a community bolster-
ing support of nine young Black men
who were unjustly convicted.
"They shall not die" was the slo-
gan taken up by thousands of Blacks
and whites in the United states in
1931 when nine young Black men
were convicted and sentenced to death
because of rape charges fabricated
against them. While today's history
books may not depict these disturb-
ing upshots of our legal system, the
work of the photojournalists, poets,
and reporters connected with the
Scottsboro case are kept alive in this
exhibit.
This wasn't the first time preju-
dice had found its way into the coun-
try's legal system; but the case cre-
ated a unique awareness of the in-
equity.
Through these photos, news ex-
cerpts, and poems, we are able to
witness the South hard hit by the de-
pression, the predicament thousands
of Black and white sharecroppers
See Place, Page 9
a0
Chekago
By Natalya Lowndes
Doubleday/$17.95
Every day we read or see things
telling us how the Russians are ei-
ther the Evil Empire, out to destroy
us at any cost, or a bunch of misun-
derstood nice guys who only want
friendship. Whatever the real thrust
of Soviet foreign policy may be, the
Russian people remain an enigma to
us. Travel to and within the Soviet
Union is tightly restricted, and Rus-
sians whose opinions and lifestyles
are not heavily regulated are rarely
allowed to come to this country.
What are Russians like? What do
they think about? What do they do
on Saturday nights?
Natalya Lowndes' novel Chekago
answers these questions and many
more besides. Lowndes is a British
academic who has travelled exten-
sively within the Soviet Union, and
her knowledge of the Russian people
and culture is shown in this almost
baroquely detailed novel.
The story centers around Sasha, a
single man who picks up garbage by
day and gets drunk by both day and
night. He lives in what we would
call a dorm - eight or ten rooms
plus a centralized kitchen and bath-
room. Sasha is looking for a wife,
which isn't difficult as there's a large
surplus of single women in the So-
viet Union, so he halfheartedly an-
swers a "lonely hearts" ad in a
newspaper. All goes well for some
time until the sudden arrivals of
Sasha's mail-order bride, a beautiful
and truly deranged American grad
student, and a pair of secret police-
men. The bride is from the country
and annoys everyone including
Sasha, and the American makes
friends with everyone and returns to
the States to write a book describing
in sociological terms what lowlifes
Sasha's housemates are.
The two secret policemen simply
move in and steal their food. One of
the men beats everyone else up,
while the other, in an extremely
backwards way, tries to become ev-
eryone's friend (and quixotically
succeeds) by coercing them into lis-
tening to his poetry readings.
Sasha's housemates can't complain
to the government about this be,
cause these men are the govern
ment. Chekago continually illus2
trates what Lowndes feels to be the
driving spirit of the Russian people
to stand up and keep going no matter
what misery they are forced to en.
dure.
The manner in which the story is
told makes for difficult reading at
first, for Lowndes has simply started
the story with very little expositioiC
For instance, since all of the charam
ters understand their living
,.
f d
See Books, Page:9
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