Revising the 1982 Oscars: What Movie Should've Won Best Picture?
No, they did not pick "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
Following my reappraisal of the 1981 Oscars, let’s do the same to the year 1982.
These feature eligible movies appearing in 1981, according to the Oscar’s rules.
Why don’t you tell me: which movie released in 1981 should’ve won Best Picture at the 1982 Oscars? Substack only lets me give you five choices in a poll, so I’ll list a few other possibilities below the poll.
Here are several other movies I’d consider:
Blow Out
Gallipoli
Heaven’s Gate
My Dinner with Andre
On Golden Pond
Prince of the City
Reds
Time Bandits
And the award went to . . .
“Chariots of Fire”?!?
It was a surprise at the time. Probably they weren’t going to give it to the adventure serial, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which is what I’m betting most people would pick now.
That’s not what I’m picking either, though.
I’m well familiar with “Chariots,” because that’s long been one of three popular movies in niche evangelical Christian circles, the kind which nurtured me as a young man. It was the example of Eric Liddell, the runner who refused to run on the Sabbath, which has been long held up to me as a good-faith type. I bet I’ve seen it seven times.
Once I grew up, though,, I realized the movie was really about the eventual death of amateur athletics as the dominant sports-form, as well as the quaint possibility, before that happened, that an erstwhile Scotsman sprinter could win at Olympic sprinting. The “god” that replaced Eric Liddell’s was winning, success, and money. These are also replacements for the dying British Empire, also depicted in the movie.
Anyway, the five nominees for Best-Picture in 1982 were Chariots; Raiders; On Golden Pond; Reds; and the forgotten Louis-Malle movie “Atlantic City,” which some people like and others just shrug at. I’m the latter type.
This Year’s Neglected Gems
If you look at my poll and the bulleted list above, it’s unlikely that you know most of these movies.
There’s a couple of gems here. “Prince of the City” is a little-seen epic that tremendously influenced Martin Scorsese. It’s a police drama about a narc inside a corrupt NYC police department. If that premise sounds trite to you, please don’t dismiss it; this movie is among the best of those types of movies I’ve ever seen.
Meanwhile, when I first watched “Thief,” I was blown away by its combo of artsy visuals, cool synths sounds, and human characterization — an odd blend of cyberpunk and humanism. It’s Michael Mann’s debut movie. Check out my video on it. In that video, I did get the city wrong for some weird reason; it’s set in Chicago.
“Reds,” a massive three-plus hour epic by actor-director Warren Beatty, was much better than I was expecting.
It brings up one fad at this time: movies nostalgically set in the 1910s. It’s an odd fad because in 1981, 1913 looked like a whole other world. I suppose that’s one reason why moviemakers were fascinated with showing it.
For comparison’s sake, the difference between 1981 and 1913 is the same as 2023 as 1955. I am not sure 1955 is a whole other world in terms of technology and mainstream lifestyles. It may well be, though, in terms of morals.
I’m not sure I’ll be alive for the 1990s nostalgia display, which I am still waiting on from feature films . . .
Are the 1980s any good?
We will answer this question at more length as this series goes on. So far, my tentative view is that the 1980s produced so many gems — in spite of the studio systems produced standardized mass entertainment — that it’s just fine overall.
A great number of people diss the 1980s in movies because, the myth goes, the American studios became corporations and turned an artform into a corporate product. This didn’t happen all at once; instead, it was a steady transformation during the decade.
Yet what we find by 1981 are movies still adhering to humanistic assumptions that go back as far as the 1930s, and which were part of perhaps the most lauded decade in American movie-history, the 1970s.
“Thief” in particular is a great blend of the flashy cinema to come and the complex characterizations of the previous decade.
I still haven’t mentioned my own choice for Best-Picture winner of 1982. Check out the video above. As one commenter told me straight up, “You don’t have a clue,” so I assume the choice is exciting!