Oscar's Honorary Awards, 2010

Some brush-stroke thinking on the winners of the next group of honorary Oscar winners, announced today:

I've never much first-hand experience with Kevin Brownlow, but I feel like I have because I know people who are big fans. My old friend Bob has read a few of his books, and I heard a lot about him when his restoration of Abel Gance's Napoleon played at Radio City Music Hall in the early 80s, as I believe Bob went twice (I did not, being a poor college student). My friend Paula, who wrote a book on silent-film star Evelyn Nesbit, is a friendly acquaintance of Brownlow's. Of course I should be more immersed in his work, as he's written books about Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd, and I have pretensions about being some kind of expert on silent film comedy. I'm tickled that the Academy would give an Oscar to a scholar, of all things.

The money behind Brownlow's work on Napoleon came from Francis Ford Coppola, who wins the Irving Thalberg Award. What an interesting career. Just a few days ago I wrote about my experience with Apocalypse Now, which capped a decade that Coppola just owned, with two Best Pictures (The Godfather and The Godfather II), and two more nominees (Apocalypse Now and The Conversation, which, amazingly, I have not seen), and a writing Oscar for Patton. But his career was badly damaged by the boondoggle that was One From the Heart, and though he has made some good films in the intervening years (I really liked his version of Dracula), he seems to me a bit of a melancholy figure. He would probably tell me I'm full of it, as he continues to work (he did have a ten-year period between directing jobs), make wine, and presumably enjoy his daughter Sophia's work.

Jean-Luc Godard was the enfant terrible of the French New Wave. Just few months ago I wrote about his feature debut, Breathless, and how it changed cinema. The first Godard film I saw was Masculin/Feminin, way back in college, but I don't remember a lot about it. I've also seen Band of Outsiders, which I enjoyed, and Pierrot Le Fou, which I did not. Contempt, another of his signature films, is perhaps the greatest example of a director luxuriating in the female form, this time of Brigitte Bardot, but is pretty obtuse. I haven't seen a post-1967 release of his (Weekend), but he has continued to make films, for good or bad. I really should put together a Godard film festival, but he's made so many films it's hard to know what to leave out. Netflix seems to have them all, God bless them. Already wags are speculating on how Godard will react to this indignity. I'm guessing he just won't show, but he might come and do something outrageous, which would be fun.

Eli Wallach would seem to getting the "Congratulations on Living This Long" Award. The man will be 95 soon, and though he didn't make his first film until after turning 40 he's made a lot of them, mostly as a supporting actor. He's best known, I guess, for his work in Spaghetti Westerns, an odd thing considering he's a Jew from Brooklyn. He was in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and The Magnificent Seven. He was in Coppola's The Godfather, Part III and in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (in both roles he played Italians). As far as I can tell he has not made a movie for Godard. He's also something of a raconteur, with great stories such as how he turned down the role in From Here to Eternity that would go to Frank Sinatra (and ended up being a legend that would make its way into The Godfather) and getting into a spat with Sergio Leone--Wallach gave up work to be in one of Leone's movies, but the director gave the part to Rod Steiger, instead. Wallach, enraged, said he would sue. "Get in line," Leone told him, slamming the phone down. It was the last time the two would speak.

Much has been made that these honors have been banished from the Academy Awards telecast, and instead are given at a non-televised ball sometime in November. But they will be acknowledged at the televised ceremony, and this way they get much more time devoted to them. I wish someone would televise it, though, for us movie geeks.

Congratulations all around, though. All four men are deserving.