Cut Gems: Oscars Snubs and Shutouts
Oscar season has arrived in earnest and while the Academy is in the news for shortening the ceremony, FACETS has the cure for the frustrations of the grand ceremony we both love and hate. The Oscars can’t reward everything in a given year but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect either! We see shutouts every year, films that were nominated but lost in the voting for one reason or another. But what about omissions, those films which are entirely overlooked by the Academy in a given year, despite seeming like a shoo-in for a specific category?
To accompany our If We Picked the Oscars screenings at the FACETS cinema this month, we have curated an expanded list of films from across the years that somehow escaped any nomination at all. Some had narratives indicating they were a lock heading into the season. Others landed just outside the awards momentum that the artists behind them found later. One even managed to get left out because a category was entirely skipped one year! Plus we’ve chosen a few that were nominated but didn’t win to help prepare you for the surprises Oscar night holds. Keep reading to find which films got left behind by awards season as well as a little about where they could have fit in as part of AMPAS history.
US
DIRECTED BY JORDAN PEELE (2019, USA)
Jordan Peele’s striking follow-up to his best picture nominated Get Out mesmerized critics and audiences alike. Yet somehow Us was forgotten by the time the 92nd Annual Academy Award nominations were announced, a surprise since there’s more than a few categories its work was lauded in. Though it would have been an excellent choice for original screenplay, directing, and even sound mixing, the performance that Lupita Nyong’o gives in the dual role of Adelaide Wilson and her double “Red” should have garnered a nomination in Best Actress.
Nyong’o poured herself into the role, one that defines the premise of the entire film and stands out even among the many recent films involving dopplegangers. Perhaps the nature of the double role makes it difficult to place in an acting category but regardless, Us remains a striking film to add to your Oscar season watchlist.
Rent Us from FACETS.
HEAT
DIRECTED BY MICHAEL MANN (1995, USA)
Though hardly off anyone’s radar these days, Michael Mann’s star-studded crime thriller remains a curious omission from 1995’s slate of Oscar nominees. Journalists, podcasters, and critics alike have broken the movie down minute-by-minute and shot-by-shot yet somehow the film welcomes these deconstructions readily while viewers can’t get enough.
Heat remains, arguably, the most renowned and engaging film of Mann’s career, continually reigniting new interest in his other films from those seeing it the first time. It’s possible to see it receiving nods in a few categories, notably editing with its crackling robbery sequences and shootouts, but its cinematographer, Dante Spinotti, has yet to win an Oscar to this day. It’s possible the Academy saw their mistake in 1995: he was later nominated twice, for L.A. Confidential and Mann’s own The Insider but Spinnoti’s collaborations with Mann helped define the look of the director’s entire filmography. His role in crafting the visual style of one of our most beloved directors surely earned him the chance at a nomination.
Rent Heat from FACETS.
UNCUT GEMS
DIRECTED BY JOSH AND BENNY SAFDIE (2019, USA)
Uncut Gems star Adam Sandler seemed like a lock for a Best Actor nomination, if not the win, after months of talk and favorable reviews. Yet, despite numerous nominations and wins from arenas as varied as the Independent Spirit Awards to the Seattle Film Critics Association, the film didn’t score even one nomination at the 92nd Academy Awards.
Sandler remains a beloved icon of the screen, and the appreciation for his performance as frenetic jewelry store owner Howard Ratner united long-time fans and the Sandler-skeptics. Both cheered the performer on throughout the awards season, making for a memorable run up to the Oscars, including his memorable Independent Spirit Awards acceptance speech. Though every performer desires recognition, Sandler’s stated hopes for an Oscar nod actually humanized him to audiences, so that even the most ardent doubters couldn’t deny he’s acutely aware of his screen-persona. The film, a seedy, frantic depiction of a desperate hustler incapable of avoiding trouble still comes up in conversation, something that makes the Academy’s oversight stinging in retrospect.
Rent Uncut Gems at FACETS.
M
DIRECTED BY FRITZ LANG (1931, GERMANY)
The Academy has a recent trend of nominating films from outside the US, including this year’s nominee Drive My Car and the 2020 ceremony’s Best Picture winner Parasite. Yet that’s not the only instance of work from international cinema breaking through, as the Academy has inconsistently acknowledged international work over the years. The more variable early days of the Oscars, where all categories could potentially see ten nominees in a given year, has found room over the years. The earliest time it happened was during 1938’s 11th ceremony, where Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion nominated alongside nine other films.
So Fritz Lang’s seminal film about the police and underworld alike hunting for a serial killer makes for a stellar hypothetical contender for the 5th Academy Awards. It’s a key work in Lang’s career, one of the last he made before leaving Germany for France, fleeing the Nazi regime. His later career in Hollywood would see him make several definitive crime films, such as The Big Heat, but no period of his work ever had work that obtained an Oscar nomination. That makes M, still considered one of the best films ever made, an easy choice for the sort of interest an Oscar nomination generates.
Launching the career of Peter Lorre, M is one of the most fascinating films from Lang’s career as it connects the eras of silent and sound film. Its minimal amount of dialogue is both a practical and stylistic choice, since sound recording was still a labor-intensive process, but the film is so engrossing that you can almost miss this element on an initial viewing. Even now critics posit about its place in Lang’s filmography, wondering if its populace of grotesque figures are symbols of Lang’s feelings toward the Nazi regime which had him eventually flee Germany.
Rent M at FACETS.
ZODIAC
DIRECTED BY DAVID FINCHER (2007, USA)
As one of the major faces of modern American cinema, David Fincher’s films are always in the Oscar conversation. Ever since The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was nominated for a tremendous 13 Oscars for the 81st Academy Awards, he’s been a mainstay of shortlists every year he releases a new film. However, the Academy entirely overlooked Zodiac, released just the year before, Fincher’s harrowing portrait of the grip the notorious Zodiac Killer had on the public consciousness during the 1960’s and 70’s.
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and with a marvelous supporting turn from a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr., Zodiac remains as unnerving now as it did upon release. Meticulously researched by Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt, the film has gone from a modest critical and financial hit to one of the filmmaker’s highest-regarded films. The 81st ceremony was a competitive year, where the Coen Bros. ultimately took home the Best Director statue for No Country For Old Men among its other awards, yet it feels like Fincher should have at least received some acknowledgement for his work here.
Rent Zodiac from FACETS.
THE FAREWELL
DIRECTED BY LULU WANG (2019, USA)
Widely acclaimed upon release, Lulu Wang’s semi-autobiographical tale of a Chinese family living around the world reuniting to say goodbye to their elderly matriarch seemed like a lock for a Best Original Screenplay nod. Alas, this was not to be in the varied and crowded year of the 92nd Academy Award nominations.
The Farewell is a quiet landmark in the current realm of independent cinema, a phenomenon on release while promising interesting future projects from Wang and her collaborators. It’s unfortunate it got lost in the crowded 2019 season. But one of the things which makes the Oscars both delightful and frustrating is how they’re often reacting to things after the fact. Wang is certain to make an appearance with future work but this quiet, personal story of a family withholding grief speaks deeply to a lot of emotions we often see subverted in our contemporary cinematic landscape. The result is often devastating, edited with a precision to make viewers deeply aware of how much the family is trying to hold things together during what is essentially a living funeral on behalf of an unknowing subject. Personal anxiety is a constant cinematic topic but few films have so well captured the impact of worrying on someone’s behalf and the effect it has on everyone involved.
Rent The Farewell from FACETS.
A MAN ESCAPED
DIRECTED BY ROBERT BRESSON (1956, FRANCE)
Considered Bresson’s masterpiece, A Man Escaped is the harrowing tale of a French Resistance Leader’s singular obsession with freeing himself from Nazi imprisonment during World War II. Though Bresson himself was part of the French Resistance and imprisoned by the occupying German forces, the film is taken from the memoirs of real-life Resistance figure André Devigny.
A Man Escaped remains an inspiration to filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Benny Safdie even today, lauded even now for its use of sound. Each tool, like a sharpened spoon, the main character uses to work his way to freedom have their own distinct sound but all carry the notion of discovery by guards. The connection between sound and image is immensely powerful in the film, maintaining tension even as the past-tense narration assures us of the character’s success in escaping. On release, Best Sound was still one category and Bresson’s film, with its complicated interplay between the audio and visual, would have rightfully made an appearance there at the 29th ceremony.
Rent A Man Escaped at FACETS.
TOKYO STORY
DIRECTED BY YASUJIRO OZU (1953, JAPAN)
Though the Oscars didn’t start awarding the Best Foreign Film Award (now known as the Best International Feature category) until 1947 with Shoeshine, the category has an intense and competitive history even in years with few nominees.
That brings us to Tokyo Story, frequently regarded as Yasujiro Ozu’s finest film. Ozu’s place as one of the most celebrated figures of Japanese cinema, someone with a distinct style that remains popular with filmgoers across the world, seemingly made him a shoo-in for an appearance for a Best Foreign Film appearance. But that recognition never materialized, something made even more strange by the fact that 1954’s 26th Academy Awards had nothing recognized at all. From 1947 to 1956, one film was selected for recognition but with films from 1953 serving a strange exception. The reasoning was that the non-competitive award was given out on a discretionary basis before the category was formalized in the 29th ceremony, making 1953 a year with nothing recognized.
Tokyo Story frequently ranks high in lists of the best films ever made, a distillation of all the qualities that make Ozu popular with viewers to this day. An emotionally-rich examination of intergenerational differences embodied by an older couple coming to visit their grown children living in Tokyo, the film demonstrates all the qualities that have kept Ozu’s name circulating for years. Peaceful enough to air on TV unedited, one of the ways which cemented his renown across the world, but powerful enough to stay in your thoughts, Tokyo Story should have been the selection for 1953’s international recognition. It makes you wonder if the Academy themselves can’t retroactively provide the film acknowledgement.
Rent Tokyo Story from FACETS.
To close things out, we’ve got three films shutout despite their nominations. Each represents a stunning achievement: one ignited a career, another sadly closed one, and yet another still has an effect on how we understand realism in cinema. All remain vital but you can compare them to the films they lost to if you don’t believe us. See below for this small collection of shutout nominees from over the years.
DO THE RIGHT THING
DIRECTED BY SPIKE LEE (1989, USA)
Perhaps the original keystone for the #OscarsSoWhite movement, Spike Lee’s enormously influential chronicle of one hot summer day in Brooklyn exploding from racial tension into violence remains as vital today as it did in 1989. You could argue it as a rival for a number of categories that year, notably for Best Picture, though it was only nominated in Best Supporting Actor and in Best Original Screenplay. However it took home neither, with the Screenplay award going to Dead Poets Society and Danny Aiello’s supporting performance losing to Denzel Washington, scoring his second Oscar nomination and first win, for Glory.
Dead Poets Society is still a beloved film by many and 1989 is a fascinating and controversial year for Oscar history. But Lee’s work writing Do the Right Thing crafted a film that’s both incredibly powerful in its moment and resonant across the wider public consciousness. Discussions about race, gentrification, immigration, policing, and so much more are at the heart of the film and it hasn’t lost a fraction of its edge. If we can’t include it in the shutout category then it justifiably should have taken this award from among its nominations.
You can compare the virtues of both Dead Poets Society and Do the Right Thing, rentable from FACETS.
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
DIRECTED BY GILLO PONTECORVO (1966, ITALY & ALGERIA)
An early breakthrough of an international film into standard categories, The Battle of Algiers actually holds the curious and unique distinction of being nominated across non-consecutive years: in the 39th ceremony, it received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and in the 41st it saw nods for both Best Screenplay and Best Director.
Though you could argue for its later nominations, it was stacked up against 2001: A Space Odyssey in both categories with Stanley Kubrick, famous for having never received an Oscar of any kind, as the competition. So instead we should look to its initial nomination in Best Foreign Film where it lost to Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman. 1966’s nominees were fascinating, with Lelouch nominated in Best Director and Best Screenplay alongside Michealangelo Antonioni’s Blowup, taking the latter home alongside its Best Foreign Film Award.
But A Man and a Woman seems less powerful than the truly-incendiary and undeniable The Battle of Algiers. Battle is a fascinating combination of fiction with documentary styling, making it feel uncannily urgent. It’s easy to see why it was a controversial object on release while earning admiration from critics and filmmakers alike. Even Kubrick was a fan with his work in competition with it at that later ceremony.
See which film you feel was the better choice by renting A Man and a Woman and The Battle of Algiers at FACETS.
THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA
DIRECTED BY ISAO TAKAHATA (2013, JAPAN)
Though we all love to debate which films were unjustly snubbed in a given year, this tends to orbit around Best Picture or Best Director. But one of the most interesting categories has been the relatively new Best Animated Feature. In the 87th ceremony, they had the chance to give the award to The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Isao Takahata’s last film before his death in 2018 and his only release during the category’s existence. Ultimately the award went to the Disney film Big Hero 6. There’s a lot of reporting, interviewing, and speculation as to what goes into voting on some categories but regardless, Kaguya might be Takahata’s masterpiece.
Taking years to make, and with a vivid visual style using watercolor backgrounds, the film is both stylistically engrossing and stunningly emotional. The fact that it was Takahat’s first release in 14 years should have carried more with voters. Takahata himself is often overlooked as part of Studio Ghibli’s creative body, with some of his films still erroneously credited to his friend and fellow director Hayao Miyazaki. A win for this film would have helped acknowledge his contributions to the medium of animation and allowed both of Ghibli’s founding directors recognition in the eyes of the American public. In the years since, Kaguya has only seen its reputation flourish while Big Hero 6 has become something of a footnote despite positive reviews.
Decide for yourself by renting both Big Hero 6 and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya at FACETS.
Be sure to get in the Oscar season spirit by pre-ordering tickets for our If We Picked the Oscars film series starting with The Power of the Dog screening at the FACETS theater. Afterwards, stop by the FACETS collection to check out films from this watchlist and many others from our catalog of over 45,000 discs!
Richard Hooper is an Editorial Assistant Intern at FACETS and is a big fan of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s work, so he’s thrilled the director is getting so much attention this year. He has an MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, writing his thesis on intermediality in animated film. He’s worked with film practically and critically, and a piece of his heart will always belong with 35mm projection.