The Oscar Quest: Best Director – 1948
How the fuck were Powell and Pressburger not nominated here? We won’t dwell on that, because that’s now what this Quest is about. But the question bears repeating — seriously, how?
As for the rest of 1948, I love most of it, and despise their Best Picture choice. Hamlet a good film, but a boring choice for Best Picture, beats The Snake Pit, a great film about mental illness, Johnny Belinda, a wonderful film I love dearly about a mute girl, The Red Shoes, which is one of the most beautiful films ever made, and, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. ’nuff said. Fortunately, though, aside from that category, they went mostly right everywhere else.
Best Actor was Laurence Olivier for Hamlet, which was well-deserved. Based on who was nominated, he was by far the best choice. Best Actress was Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda, which I talked about here, which is seriously one of the top five best decisions in that category of all time. Best Supporting Actor was Walter Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which was a well-deserved Oscar that he earned three times over by that point. And Best Supporting Actress was Claire Trevor, for Key Largo, which is the only other poor decision from this year, in my opinion. 4 out of 6 decisions were great though, this year, especially this one. This decision is just glorious.
BEST DIRECTOR – 1948
And the nominees were…
John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Anatole Litvak, The Snake Pit
Jean Negulesco, Johnny Belinda
Laurence Olivier, Hamlet
Fred Zinnemann, The Search (more…)
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