The Oscar Quest: Best Director – 1930-1931
It’s Best Director month here at the B+ Movie Blog. The reason for that is, one — how do you really talk about Best Director? Do you go by innovation? Best film? Most stylistic? How do you judge? Best Director is perhaps the most nebulous of the awards. Logic dictates that — well, the best film, by default, had the Best Director. But sometimes it doesn’t. How does one mediate? Also — what exactly does a director do? Film is a collaborative medium. How much are we to say is the choice of the director and not, say, the writer, or the DP, or the set designer, or even producers or the actors. Sometimes the producer will say, “We need more action here,” or the actor will refuse to shoot a scene a certain way and the director will have to change it to suit the actor. Where do you draw the line at what a director does?
So, not really having an answer to that, along with the fact that — it needs to be done — I’m just gonna lump all the Best Directors as closely as possible. There are 83 of them. Eleven are already done. I’m doing thirty this month. That leaves — quick, math whizzes, crunch the numbers — 42 left from May. That’s not bad. Another Director month around, say — November — or maybe sooner if I really want to be rid of them — along with a few interspersed here and there — we’ll be done in no time. (more…)