Revisiting the 1983 Oscars -- What Should've Won Best Picture
In which I pick a movie you've probably never heard of
Following my reappraisal of the 1982 Oscars, let’s do the same to the year 1983.
These feature eligible movies appearing in 1982, according to the Oscar’s rules.
The original 1983 Oscar Nominees for Best Picture were
Gandhi
E.T. the Extraterrestrial
Missing
Tootsie
The Verdict
And the award went to . . .
“Gandhi”
You look back on this now, and they slighted Spielberg again. He lost for “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the previous year. Now, he goes out and has the second-biggest box-office hit ever in “E.T.” — adjusted for inflation — and they don’t give it to him!
Instead, David Attenborough wins for “Gandhi,” a big biopic about the historical figure.
The only thing I remember well about “Gandhi” is the most devastating takedown I’ve might’ve ever read — Richard Grenier’s “The Gandhi Nobody Knows,” in a 1983 issue of Commentary magazine. You must read this. It obliterates the movie’s hero-worship of its main character, calling it historically wrong and anachronistic.
The Original Nominee List was Weak
First, you can make a better list of nominees from science-fiction movies alone, and not including “E.T.” Compare this list below to the original list above. I’m betting all the young bros who watch my Youtube channel are going to prefer this one, 98 out of 100 of them.
Blade Runner
The Thing
Mad Mad 2: The Road Warrior
Tron
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
In fact, from the original nominee list above, if I just had those movies to choose from, I would pick …
Missing
What is this movie, you ask? I never heard of it until I began investigating this year. It’s a historical drama that contrasts two types, the religious-political conservative and the young American radical circa 1982, played respectively by Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. Both are in search of a missing American male relative in and during the 1973 Chilean coup.
As a political thriller that depicts what it would be like to be in a military coup and its tyrannical aftermath, "Missing" reigns supreme. I advocate watching it just to have that simulated experience. You might have a hard time finding this movie, though. I had to get it from interlibrary loan, the only way I could procure it.
My Best-Picture Nominee List
Blade Runner (original theatrical cut)
Das Boot
Deathtrap
Lola
Moonlighting
One from the Heart
I’m cheating for now and leaving six movies here. We can eliminate one of them quickly and get to the requisite number of five.
That would be, unfortunately, “Blade Runner.” The reason is that the original cut is the one the voters had in 1983. And that cut is the worst, featuring a mailed-in voiceover from Harrison Ford that is not only mostly needless but is usually intrusive and stupid. The “Blade Runner” we all know comes from the various director’s cuts and special cuts released over the 15-20 years after the initial release.
That leaves five movies that, frankly, most people have never heard of. With apologies to “The Thing” and Werner Herzog’s bizarre “Fitzcarraldo,” let’s look at these briefly.
Das Boot
One of the boldest movies ever made just because the Nazis are the heroes. But really, the movie makes a massive disclaimer: the WW2-era German sailors on a submarine don’t like Hitler or the Nazis. Instead they are just fighting because they have to.
One of the better war-action movies ever made, I should have my teenage sons watch this now that I’m thinking of it.
Deathtrap
The great director Sidney Lumet had *another* movie nominated this year, “The Verdict” with Paul Newman, but I much prefer this mostly one-room mystery thriller, based on a Broadway play. The acting is supreme: Michael Caine, Dyan Cannon, and Christopher Reeve. The Hitchcockian notes are delightful. Recommended for just about anybody.
Lola
One of the last movies made by the great and prolific German director Rainer Werner Fassbender, at the end of the time, “Lola" might end up being the only film ever to be entertainingly humanistic about building contractors and building inspectors.
Bizarrely, several good films this year were about building inspectors, remodels, and basic construction projects, such as our next movie.
Moonlighting
This is not the 1980s TV show featuring Bruce Willis. It is the movie that critic Gene Siskel picked as one of his top-10 of the entire decade of the 1980s.
Is it that good? I think it’s that *complex* — mixing in labor relations, Cold-War politics, communism and its faults, capitalistic excess, alienation in the modern world, and about a hundred different other adult problems.
It features Polish workers sent to London to remodel a flat of a Polish diplomat. You have to know that these workers are in communist Poland. They are getting a taste of the West, and yet they must go back eventually. I will never forget the scene where these men, living behind Iron Curtain, walk into a British grocery store. It’s a cornucopia of goods, yet it’s similar to their home, with its surveillance practices.
One from the Heart
This Francis Ford Coppola romance, his follow-up to “Apocalypse Now,” turned out to be a highly influential film. For example, “La La Land” owes everything to it.
Yet it was a critically derided box-office bomb. Why?
I can’t figure it out: this is an amazing romantic film about two people in love, who split apart and go into what I think is their own romantic fantasy worlds, which are vivid and yet all wrong at the same time.
The movie is in love with movie-magic, particularly 1940s and 50s musicals. If I like it, and I usually don’t like this kind of movie, perhaps those of you who prefer this kind of thing will too.
And My 1983 Best Picture Goes To…
“Moonlighting.”
I just find it to be thoughtfully complex. Beyond that, it’s voiceover narrator is perhaps one of the most interesting I’ve ever heard.
Most voiceover, including the disastrous “Blade Runner” version in the theatrical cut, merely repeat what’s being show on screen. They are pointless.
A good movie voiceover adds serious twists, new perspectives that are angular to what’s being shown. That’s the case here: the Jeremy Irons character has desires and memories that we can’t know from the depiction, and they show him as an isolated man, both from his own fellow workers, his countrymen, and the English citizens surrounding him.
In short, I think Gene Siskel’s high praise of “Moonlighting” is correct.
Overall, though, and as a caution to you, this is probably going to be my weakest Best-Picture winner of any year of the 1980s.