Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Impressive B&W line-up - I went with A Place in the Sun. The colour line-up is also good - went for When Worlds Collide.

Omissions (some of which are not eligible) for a strong year include, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Miss Our, The River, Diary of a Country Priest, Westward the Women & Early Summer.

Had no idea John Alton was one of the cinematographers on An American in Paris - just checked and he only worked on the ballet sequences while the dp on the film was Alfred Gilks. So glad that he won the Oscar but his best work, as Magilla has pointed out, was in many of the superbly shot black and white B-films (many of the early Anthony Mann noirs).

His best work - T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948), He Walked By Night (1949), The Crooked Way (1949), Border Incident (1949), Mystery Street (1950) and Devil's Doorway (1951).

B&W

A Place in the Sun, Strangers on a Train and A Streetcar Named Desire are some of the best photographed films of the era as well as well as some of the best films, period.

Death of a Salesman is an actor's showcase. The cinematography is not something that distinguishes it. The Frogmen follows a seldom filmed specialized unit of the U.S. Navy tied to a routine WWII story. More interesting choices than these two might have been La Ronde, The Day the Earth Stood Still,Oliver Twist and/or Ace in the Hole.

I went with Robert Burks on the first of his three winless nominations for Strangers on a Train.

Color

Personally, I would have preferred to see The African Queen and The River nominated instead of David and Bathsheba and When Worlds Collide, but the remaining three are all interesting picks.

This was the sixth and final nomination for Charles Rosher (Show Boat), who won, along with Karl Struss, the first Academy Award for Cinematography for Sunrise.

This was the tenth of eleven Oscarless nominations for William V. Skall, nominated along with three-time Oscar winner Robert Surtees for Quo Vadis.

This was the only nomination for veterans Alfred Gilks and John Alton, jointly nominated for An American in Paris. Gilks (Ruggles of Red Gap, Hell or High Water, The Searchers) had been a cinematographer since 1920. Alton (T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked by Night), best remembered for his innovative lighting of various films noir, had been a cinematographer since 1933. Call it a career achievement win it you want, but it was one that would have been deserved if they had never made another film.

An American in Paris gets my vote.