R.I.P. Vladimir Menshov

[Mister Tee]

Tee, was Seven Beauties considered the frontrunner in 76? I know those races weren't analyzed to the degree then that they are now. I remember one Oscar book I read once mentioned Cousin, Cousine as the frontrunner.

I was actually quite torn about how to call that category -- the from-nowhere choice of Black and White in Color was frustrating not just because I thought it a bad one, but because it left unresolved the question I'd had in the Oscar lead-up: would voters automatically go for the prestige-heavier Seven Beauties, or opt for the frothier, genuinely popular Cousin Cousine? Because the former was clearly the more critically-certified -- third place finisher for both film and director at the NY Critics. But Cousin Cousine had been, by foreign-film standards, a blockbuster -- the biggest foreign-language hit since A Man and a Woman a decade earlier -- and its actress/screenplay nominations put it right up there, stat-wise, with Wertmuller's film.

Your post raises a number of other interesting points, and I, like Sabin, would like to engage some of them. But I think we may do better to move them to a new, dedicated thread; we've already hijacked this poor soul's obituary, and, should the discussion branch out in the many ways I think it could, it would all better fit elsewhere.

[Sabin]

dws1982 wrote
Also interesting to note, looking through the category, just what a drag that category was from around 1980 through 2010. A lot of years, you're lucky if the winner is something that anyone has heard of, and in many of those years, if you've heard of the winner, the other four movies are things that no one has thought of since they were nominated.

This is a very good point. And I wonder, is there a consensus for the most impressive roster in this category? Skipping through them, 1976 does look very impressive. As does 1971, 1966, and 1956 but there's rarely a year where I've seen all the nominees.

Had Burning replaced Capernaum or Never Look Away (full disclosure: I haven't seen them), I think 2018 might be up there.

[dws1982]

I saw Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears 40 years ago, and have very little memory of it, beyond the fact that it seemed something of a soap opera -- like a Russian variation on The Best of Everything -- and wasn't close in quality to the more celebrated films it defeated. (Much like Black and White in Color doesn't approach the quality of Seven Beauties.)

IMDb's Trivia says that he wasn't allowed to attend to the Oscars to accept the Foreign Film award because Soviet authorities were suspicious of his political beliefs. Sad that he didn't get to experience his one career highlight. I'm pretty sure Bonardchuk wasn't at the ceremony where War and Peace won, and I believe the Soviet authorities came on the plane from Los Angeles as soon as it landed and took the Oscar, so I'm sure he wouldn't have been able to keep it, as some winners of the Foreign/International award do. (I know Uri mentioned Moshe Mizrahi had the Oscar for Madame Rosa in his Tel Aviv apartment, and I remember an article mentioning that Pawel Pawlikowski had the Oscar for Ida at his home in Warsaw.)

Tee, was Seven Beauties considered the frontrunner in 76? I know those races weren't analyzed to the degree then that they are now. I remember one Oscar book I read once mentioned Cousin, Cousine as the frontrunner. I know it also had other nominations, and it's actually not hard to see today, although no one ever talks about it, and Criterion has had the rights forever but has never made an effort to release it, presumably because they know there's little interest. I seem to remember Damien was a fan though. Interesting to note, that despite making a few Hollywood movies, Black and White in Color is one of those Foreign Film winners that no one ever watches or talks about, like Gavin Hood's Tsotsi (awful movie) or Juan Jose Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes (he directs a ton of American TV, although he hasn't made any American films).

Also interesting to note, looking through the category, just what a drag that category was from around 1980 through 2010. A lot of years, you're lucky if the winner is something that anyone has heard of, and in many of those years, if you've heard of the winner, the other four movies are things that no one has thought of since they were nominated: Take a look at the list of movies that All About My Mother beat. Or for truly obscure lineups, look at the years films called Kolya and Character won. The 2010's have really been a breath of fresh air in this category. (I know some of this is due to recency, and changes in the ways films are distributed, and the 2010's do have plenty of instantly-forgotten nominees--Theeb, Tangerines, Kon-Tiki--but if you look at the filmmakers having films nominated this decade compared to the past three, this decade blows them away.)

[Mister Tee]

I saw Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears 40 years ago, and have very little memory of it, beyond the fact that it seemed something of a soap opera -- like a Russian variation on The Best of Everything -- and wasn't close in quality to the more celebrated films it defeated. (Much like Black and White in Color doesn't approach the quality of Seven Beauties.)

[dws1982]

Russian Director Menshov Dies of Covid at 81

Not one of the widely-known or widely-celebrated Russian filmmakers--he actually only directed five features and was more prolific as an actor--but he did direct one of the few Russian films to win the Foreign Film Oscar, back in 1980, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. I've never seen it. It's not the easiest movie to see, although it was streaming on Prime a couple of years back, along with lots of Soviet and Polish movies from that era, but when I tried to watch it the image quality was truly awful, subtitles were terrible; it was unwatchable.

Some of the films it beat are much more well-known: Kagemusha, The Last Metro, Istvan Szabo's Confidence (which just got released on BluRay in the US a few months ago). I know this doesn't necessarily mean anything about the quality of the film and can have more to do with legalities and rights issues as anything. (Andrzej Wajda's The Maids of Wilko, a Foreign Film nominee from the year before, is an all-timer, but is also deeply obscure and never talked about, largely due to the poor distribution of Polish films of that era.)