The History of Best International Film

[Conway]

The following are taken from the Wikipedia category Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award Submissions by Country. Years are what appear to be, from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the calendar year of commercial release wherever in the world, (not film festival showings, and not the Oscar-eligibility-submission-deadline timeframe). They're my favorite non-U.S. movies that were submitted for Oscar consideration in the Foreign-Language Film (now International Feature) categrory, but were not nominated. They cover calendar years 1954-2020, which is what I've completed so far on my movie catch-ups. The first year of the Oscar category was 1956, not 1954, so effectively the coverage is instead 1956-2020. I ended up with a list of 40. Next task will be non-U.S. movies that were never submitted at all for Oscar consideration in the same category.

Man on the Tracks (POLAND, 1957)
Black Wind (MEXICO, 1965)
The Green Wall (PERU, 1970)
Mon Oncle Antoine (CANADA, 1971)
Cousin Angélica (SPAIN, 1974)
Max Havelaar (NETHERLANDS/Indonesia, 1976)
Yol (SWITZERLAND/Turkey, 1982)
Antarctica (JAPAN, 1983)
Oriana (VENEZUELA, 1985)
Man Facing Southeast (ARGENTINA, 1987)
Wings of Desire (WEST GERMANY/France, 1987)
Letters from the Park (CUBA, 1989)
Song of the Exile (TAIWAN/Hong Kong, 1990)
Like Water for Chocolate (MEXICO, 1992)
Abraham's Valley (PORTUGAL/Switzerland, 1993)
Country Teachers (CHINA, 1993)
Earth (INDIA, 1998)
Luna Papa (TAJIKISTAN/Russia/Germany, 1999)
El Último Tren (URUGUAY, 2002)
Seawards Journey (URUGUAY, 2003)
Valentín (ARGENTINA/Netherlands/Spain, 2003)
Machuca (CHILE, 2004)
The Cave of the Yellow Dog (MONGOLIA/Germany, 2005)
Captain Abu Raed (JORDAN, 2008)
Everlasting Moments (SWEDEN, 2008)
The Song of Sparrows (IRAN, 2008)
About Elly (IRAN, 2009)
Letters to Father Jacob (FINLAND, 2009)
Aftershock (CHINA, 2010)
Even the Rain (SPAIN, 2010)
Barbara (GERMANY, 2012)
Halima's Path (CROATIA/Slovenia/Bosnia-Herzogovina, 2012)
The German Doctor (ARGENTINA, 2013)
1001 Grams (NORWAY, 2014)
The Fencer (FINLAND/Estonia/Germany, 2015)
Ixcanul (GUATEMALA, 2015)
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (FINLAND, 2016)
The King's Choice (NORWAY, 2016)
Dear Comrades! (RUSSIA, 2020)
The Mole Agent (CHILE/Netherlands/Germany, 2020)

[Mister Tee]

So, to complete my survey of the history of this category, there've been two or three developments in the past decade-plus that have changed outcomes in, I'd say, a positive way -- or at least a way that puts the category more in line with the rest of the Oscars, as opposed to leaving it off in its own strange corner.

The first was changing, initially, the procedures, and then the composition, of the selection committees. This group of, as previously noted, mostly elderly/retired voters, had been consistently favoring more old-fashioned/sentimental entries (and, corollarily, being resistant to more challenging efforts) -- they were known to stop screenings early on if a certain percentage of attendees signaled dislike via turning on a flashlight. The Academy created something of a back-up to stop this early blackballing -- enabling certain members to "rescue" a film despite overall committee reaction, keeping it alive on the late short-list.

The second (or maybe 1A) step was altering the composition of the selection committee itself -- making an effort to see it was no longer so dominated by older, more conservative folk.

These changes didn't mean necessarily tougher films made the final cut -- 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was among those rescued but still omitted from the nominations -- but there are quite a few films you can guess might have benefited from the new regime: Revanche, The White Ribbon, Dogtooth, The Missing Picture, Leviathan, Toni Erdmann, The Square -- all seem unlikely to have scored nominations during the Mediterraneo years.

The bigger change came early in the '10s, when the widespread use of screeners persuaded the Academy to finally drop the must-attend-screenings requirement -- meaning closer to the full body of voters were in on the final selection. This is why, after decades of wild upsets, we've had far closer to consensus choices in the category -- even films like The Great Beauty or Son of Saul, which might have been too bracing for a more limited electorate, rode to victory based on broad critical approval. Some might lament the loss of the wild card aspect of the category -- it's been a long time since the favorite lost here, even in years like this past one, where many thought Quo Vadis, Aida? a very worthy challenger to front-runner Another Round. But we have come closer to the goal of honoring the most widely-admired films, rather than the ones that appealed most successfully to a small demographic.

To address a few specific films dws spoke of in his post that started all this:

Kolya was an overwhelming favorite for the prize in 1996; my recollection is, it was pretty widely praised. I got to it fairly late -- before the Oscars, but not much before. I confess the descriptions I'd heard -- "a Czech version of Kramer vs. Kramer" -- hadn't enticed me much, but I figured the high praise meant it'd be something more than that. Well...no such luck. I found the movie quite simplistic and sentimental; nothing special at all. It's not like the only other nominee I've seen (Ridicule) wowed me, either...but I'll still never understand the massive preference for Kolya that year.

I guess the following year's Character might be pretty obscure at this point -- and, to be honest, the film's only big claim to fame in 1997 was that it won the Oscar. But I remember finding the film quite lively and enjoyable -- which was a definite step up over Kolya.

Tsotsi is the one winner from the past 30 years I've been unable to make myself watch. I started to look at it on IFC or something, and got about 10 minutes or so in -- up to the point where the guy finds the baby left in the car -- and I thought to myself, I can't watch a movie with such a ridiculous premise. Maybe I should give it another shot, but dws' evaluation doesn't push me that direction.

Finally, to the question of which slate is the BEST OF ALL TIME -- such decisions are inevitably limited by how many films on each slate one has seen, meaning more recent years are advantaged. The first year I saw all five contenders was 1994, and I could argue for that year -- I'd probably have chosen Eat Drink Man Woman of the bunch, but both Before the Rain and winner Burnt by the Sun are quite good, and the other two very much watchable. On the other hand, I've seen four of 2002's slate, but don't that much like any of them. 2008 is another perfect attendance year for me, and I like the group a lot -- the only shame is the weakest of them, Departures, is what took the trophy. I've seen all of 2013, and love The Great Beauty/The Missing Picture, but loathe The Broken Circle Breakdown and don't much like The Hunt. 2018 is a landmark group, and I think Sabin is right: if you traded Burning in (dropping Capernaum, for me), it'd be as good as one could hope for.

But all this is sophistry, unless I can fill in the (major) gaps in the first four decades of the category and really make a considered judgment.

[dws1982]

I had a long response going and then I accidentally closed the tab, so who knows when I'll get rewritten, but hopefully this weekend. It's been a busy week (AP Computer Science training) and will be a busy week next week (AP Statistics training, which I don't need, have already done twice, but I have to do for job reasons) but I've enjoyed reading the discussion so far.

[Big Magilla]

You guys are way too quick to foist blame onto the submitting countries for these rosters. Want to see a partial list, for that period 1980-2010, of films that WERE submitted by their countries of origin, but passed over by the Academy’s selection committee? Diva, Fitzcaraldo, The Night of the Shooting Stars, Wings of Desire, The Double Life of Veronique, Like Water for Chocolate, The Flower of My Secret, The Celebration, Run Lola Run, In the Mood for Love, City of God, House of Flying Daggers, Cache, Volver, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. You can debate the quality of some of these titles, but they were, without doubt, more prominent/had greater audience impact than at least 40% of the films that ended up nominated.

Both situations exist.

[Mister Tee]

You guys are way too quick to foist blame onto the submitting countries for these rosters. Want to see a partial list, for that period 1980-2010, of films that WERE submitted by their countries of origin, but passed over by the Academy’s selection committee? Diva, Fitzcaraldo, The Night of the Shooting Stars, Wings of Desire, The Double Life of Veronique, Like Water for Chocolate, The Flower of My Secret, The Celebration, Run Lola Run, In the Mood for Love, City of God, House of Flying Daggers, Cache, Volver, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. You can debate the quality of some of these titles, but they were, without doubt, more prominent/had greater audience impact than at least 40% of the films that ended up nominated.

And there’s more to it. Over these three decades, fewer than one-third of the films that won the NY Critics’ foreign film prize were nominated by the Oscars. (By comparison, 7 of their last 11 winners have made the cut.) These include a few titles from the previous list, but also such as A Sunday in the Country, Ran, My Life as a Dog, Europa Europa, Three Colors: Red, Yi Yi, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bad Education, 2046, and Summer Hours. (Several of these had enough support to get regular-category nominations, but foreign film? Unh-uh.) Throw in a few more prominent, omitted titles -- Jean de Florette, Tampopo, To Live, Talk to Her, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – and you come to the conclusion those three decades were nowhere near as drab as suggested by some of the era’s no-name slates.

Now, you may say, but that second paragraph DOES prove our point: it was the submitting countries’ fault, not the Academy’s. But I’m going to argue – and this was the point I was teasing in my initial reference – that the Academy’s choices, both for nominees and ultimate winner, filtered down to the nominating committees, and they began to gear their selections to the kinds of movies they thought would appeal to this limited audience of retirees. After seeing Herzog, Wenders, Kieslowski and Wong Kar-wai being passed over – and watching mild films with 30s/40s settings (the chronological sweet spot of those retirees), like Mediterraneo and Belle Epoque, pulling upset wins over critics’ favorites – these committees presumably started to game out their selections ever more cynically. I’m not suggesting they should have gone for artistic broke in every case – I don’t fault anyone for not pushing Catherine Breillat films – but I think you can see a certain amount of esthetic conservatism taking hold as this period went on. Pedro was lucky enough to get the prize for All About My Mother, but he’s been passed over far more often than his career merits. Kieslowski never made the list. Herzog had to do a documentary before he got noticed. Meantime, as dws notes, directors whose careers have amounted to virtually nothing have watched their films carry home for their countries the same prize that Fellini and Bergman once rated.

Happily, there have been big changes since, which have made the past decade far more representative of the work on display. I’ll get to that in my next installment.

[Big Magilla]

or was this new Academy policy instrumental in making the foreign lists so much less interesting?

Don't think it had anything to do with the Academy's policy since films submitted for the award was purely the choice of each country. The Academy had no say in which film any particular country had submitted. From the pool of choices the nominees were chosen. What also didn't help during a number of instances was that often a country would ignore one of their own highly acclaimed films and instead submit a film nobody had really heard about. Hence many prominent directors' films missed out in competing for the award. Damien, in his book, highlights a number of very famous films that missed out on a nod simply because a country chose to submit another film instead.

Yes, but this was a problem even before countries submitted entries. For example, post-WWII Japan controlled which of the country's films would be released outside the country. Yasujiro Ozu, now generally considered the greatest and most universally appealing Japanese director of the era, was considered to be too Japanese to appeal outside of the country. Consequently, even his greatest films were not available to the rest of the world at the time they were produced.

1953's Tokyo Story, which has topped many lists of all-time greatest films, was first shown out of Japan at the London Film Festival in October 1958. Still, it did not get a worldwide release, Japan preferring instead to allow the rest of the world think that the only films the country made were samurai epics set in ancient times.

Tokyo Story had a two-day limited screening in L.A. in 1967, three years after Ozu's death. It was not given U.S. theatrical showings until 1972 when it, Late Spring, and other Ozu masterworks were finally made available here.

[Okri]

A) For what it’s worth, Cousine, Cousine is available to stream through Criterion (and the Ted Danson remake via Kanopy)

B) I’m a little fonder of some of the line-ups from the 80s and 90s, to be honest. Dws mentions the 1996 line-up, but I think Ridicule and Prisoner of the Mountains are genuinely great movies. And looking through the three decades, I don’t see them as consistently wan.

C) For whatever reason, AMPAS seems very slow to warm-up to national cinemas when they get “hot,” but I’ll echo that I think that’s just as much down to the country itself. Iran has only been nominated three times, but I don’t see them submitting a lot (at all) in the 80s and early 90s. On the other hand, South Korea and Romania couldn’t get anything despite some ridiculous hot streaks.

[Reza]

or was this new Academy policy instrumental in making the foreign lists so much less interesting?

Don't think it had anything to do with the Academy's policy since films submitted for the award was purely the choice of each country. The Academy had no say in which film any particular country had submitted. From the pool of choices the nominees were chosen. What also didn't help during a number of instances was that often a country would ignore one of their own highly acclaimed films and instead submit a film nobody had really heard about. Hence many prominent directors' films missed out in competing for the award. Damien, in his book, highlights a number of very famous films that missed out on a nod simply because a country chose to submit another film instead.

[Big Magilla]

As an overview, all of this is interesting, but if we're going to discuss individual years we probably should have a separate thread for each one.

Non-Hollywood films were not welcome at the early Oscars. It wasn't until the sixth year that a non-Hollywood film figured into the awards when Charles Laughton won Best Actor for the British made The Private Life of Henry VIII. Paradoxically, British actors and actresses in Hollywood films fared quite well, as did other European imports from Garbo and Dietrich to Chevalier and Boyer, Rainer and Lamarr and more.

Foreign language films didn't grab Oscar's fancy until the French Grand Illusion was nominated for Best Picture at the 1938 awards. Whatever burgeoning market there was for moving foreign language films out of their niche was put on hold during World War II when even British made films were not released in the U.S.

After the war, the floodgates were open. 1946 alone saw U.S. releases of the British Henry V and Brief Encounter, the Italian Open City and the French Children of Paradise among others, all of which had been released in their home countries in prior years. 1947 gave us the British Great Expectations and Black Narcissus, the French Beauty and the Beast, the Italian Shoeshine, and others. 1948 gave us the British Hamlet and the French Fanny trilogy from Pagnol. Only the first of the trilogy, Marius had been released in the U.S. in the early 1930s and that in French without subtitles.

By the time of the 1947 awards, there was no need to give a special award to British films as they were doing quite well on their own, but foreign language films were still being shut out of competition. It made sense to single out one per year. The first award went to Shoeshine, followed through 1955 by Monsieur Vincent, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Rashomon, Forbidden Games, none in 1953, Gate of Hell and Samurai, all of which had been shown in either New York, Los Angeles, or both, during those years but not limited to Los Angeles as was the rule for all other feature awards.

Submissions from foreign countries themselves began with the 1955 awards, where, as Tee notes, the awards through 1974 generally went to the most acclaimed nominee in general release.

Forcing voters to see all submissions from 1975 forward, left the award open to question. Were they voting for films most people hadn't seen over popular favorites because they genuinely preferred them or did they have some other motive such as a snobbish preference for having seen something that few others had?

It would be an easier award to decipher if all the nominees had to have had commercial releases in Los Angeles like nominees in all other major categories where they would at least have been reviewed if not seen by everyone, but then we might not have been aware of some films that were worth catching up with when they were eventually released. Alas, some of the nominees were never commercially released in the U.S. thrown further puzzlement into the mix.

[Mister Tee]

One more time: 1966 with A Man and a Woman, The Battle of Algiers, and The Loves of a Blonde? Good! Pharaoh and Three? No idea.

Worth noting that, for those of us following in real time, The Battle of Algiers was just as much an unknown quantity as those two you reference today. Pontecorvo's movie didn't play the NY Film Festival till Fall of 1967 (and LA till sometime in '68, which explains the two-year nominations gap). Without the Internet, it was difficult to know anything about these un-publicized nominees, even ones that later came to be prominent (The Emigrants was much the same; in Spring '72, it was just one of the four non-entities that was going to lose to Garden of the Finzi-Continis; a year later, it was a major category nominee). Even though the lists in the '65-'75 stretch feature some losing films that are now familiar, for the most part, as far as we Oscar fans knew, the standard roster was four movies you never heard of, plus Amarcord.

In 1975, the Academy decided to do something about this situation -- again with the best of intentions, and again mucking things up. It was decided it was unfair for those little films to fall to Goliaths year after year, simply based on name recognition. So, a rule was instituted: in order to vote on the category, one had to prove they'd viewed all five nominees. in an era preceding DVD/VHS, this meant required attendance at screenings for those films not yet commercially released -- something not many voters had the leisure time to indulge. The category was likely decided by a far smaller vote total than any other category -- only those who'd seen the most obscure nominee were eligible -- and also a far older demographic, since retirees were the most likely screening attendees.

The switch had results in the very first year, though the impact wasn't immediately obvious. Scent of a Woman went into the ceremony the favorite, based on its screenplay nomination, but it wasn't a juggernaut in the same class as the Bunuel/Truffaut/Fellini winners that had immediately preceded it. Still, it turned heads when Dersu Uzala was named the winner. Dersu Uzala is another one you're going to have to trust me on: though it's now known as a Kurosawa film, no one was aware of that on Oscar night. (Andrew Sarris, in his Oscar, wrap-up, asked "What the hell is Dersu Uzala?" -- if Andrew Sarris didn't know about it, no one did.)

Still, as noted: Scent of a Woman wasn't such a big deal that its defeat was viewed as towering upset, so we went into the following year expecting a return to normalcy. We had two big boppers contending that year: the critics' choice Seven Beauties, and the massive (by foreign standards) hit Cousin Cousine. When the winner was announced to be neither of the two, but instead Black and White in Color (a movie of which, once again, no one had ever heard; it didn't open in NY till a month or two later), it was clear we were in new territory. And when the same thing happened AGAIN the following year -- where the competition was thought to be between Bunuel's Obscure Object of Desire and Scola's A Special Day, but the winner was instead Madame Rosa, which had opened only a week prior in NY -- it was confirmed. The Oscar slate was still frequently four unknowns and Amarcord...but now, Amarcord wasn't winning.

There were exceptions. If a film was truly viewed as special, it won going away, just as the giants had in the early years -- The Tin Drum, Fanny and Alexander, The Official Story, Cinema Paradiso became big enough deals that they romped to victory. But films in a slightly lower echelon -- like The Last Metro/Kagemusha, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Cyrano de Bergerac, Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell My Concubine -- were prone to upsets at the hands of films unknown to most of us.

dws rightly notes how poor a lot of the rosters were in the 1980-2010 period. I'll save comment on that for another post, but I will throw out this question: was the poor quality displayed in this period simply a matter of the talent pool drying out -- after all, no one emerged to replace the extraordinary deSica/Bergman/Kurosawa/Fellini/Antonioni/Truffaut group who'd so lit up screens from the late 40s through mid-70s -- or was this new Academy policy instrumental in making the foreign lists so much less interesting?

[Sabin]

The question of "Which is the best lineup of movies in Best International Film" very quickly devolves into "Have I heard of four of them?" For example, 1956 looks like a good bet with La Strada, The Burmese Harp, and Gervaise. But as for The Captain of Köpenick and Qivitoq? I have no idea. Same thing with 1963 with 8 1/2, Knife in the Water, and Twin Sisters of Kyoto. But Los Tarantos and The Red Lanterns? No idea. The Shop on Main Street, Kwaidan, and Marriage: Italian Style? Sure. Blood on the Land and Dear John? No idea. I want to be clear, I haven't seen all these films but I understand them to be good.

One more time: 1966 with A Man and a Woman, The Battle of Algiers, and The Loves of a Blonde? Good! Pharaoh and Three? No idea.

Here's my question: what would be the worst thing that could happen if every country got to submit two movies? That way these people wouldn't have to choose between Pedro Almodovar and all the other filmmakers in Spain every single year.

[mlrg]

My country, Portugal, holds the record of being the country with most submissions without ever being nominated. 35 entries in total. Not even a shortlisted film.

[OscarGuy]

I did a post four years ago looking at the history of the category from a numbers perspective. I did it in two parts. Here are the links:

http://cinemasight.com/oscar-statistics ... ms-part-1/
http://cinemasight.com/oscar-statistics ... ms-part-2/

[gunnar]

In general, International Film has not been a category of much interest to me until the last few years. There have been exceptions over the years that I would go see in the theater, such as Pelle the Conqueror, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, etc. There have been others that I would watch later on dvd based on word of mouth such as Pan's Labyrinth. I've managed to watch just over half of the nominees in the category, though, and will track down and watch the rest of them eventually.

I haven't watched all of the nominees from 1956 yet, but I don't think that either The Captain from Köpenick or Qivitoq will change my opinion of the best film in this category from that year. I thought La Strada was a very good film, but I liked The Burmese Harp quite a bit more than La Strada. I can see La Strada winning on a level playing field, though I wonder if the pro-France and Italy bias played a role in that film winning. Also, I wonder how well known The Burmese Harp was at the time of its release in the U.S.

[Mister Tee]

I think this title is fine. It's how we knew the category for 70 years, and was the name during the period we'll probably spend a lot of time covering. Thanks for setting this up, after my lazy "someone should..." suggestion.

I'll probably post stuff here in pieces, but some opening thoughts:

The initial prod for the honoring of foreign-language films was likely the writers' nominations for Open City and Children of Paradise in 1946. But, in a more macro sense, the impetus was probably a "let's bring the world together, not have any more grisly wars like that" feeling. Which led to decisions that affect the category even unto this day.

As Andrew Sarris long ago pointed out, there seemed to be resistance to the simple fact that the vast majority of foreign-language films popular in the U.S. came from France and Italy. This was probably true even before the war, but afterward -- with Germany stripped of much of its talent (Germany might have been the one country equipped to challenge US hegemony in film; instead, its refugees contributed to US dominance), China and the Soviet bloc largely quarantined, the entire UK ineligible by language, and most other countries having very small film capabilities -- it was undeniable. Which you can see from the early winners of the foreign film category: from the first year through the mid-60s (till, largely thanks to Kurosawa and Bergman, Japan and Sweden were added to the list), it was almost always Italy or France winning.

Despite this fact, the Academy -- again, likely with good global intentions -- established the one country/one film policy, and left the selection up to the submitting countries. This meant that Italy and France were limited to one film per annum, regardless of how many prominent films they produced, and, further, that the choice was left in the hands of bureaucrats -- meaning the nominee would be a film that reflected well on the country of origin. This was bad news for early gadflies like Truffaut and Godard, whose breakthrough films were ignored by the committees (Truffaut, despite the early screenplay nod for The 400 Blows, didn't show up on the roster till Stolen Kisses, many great films into his career; Godard never turned up). But it was also fatal for the second/third-best French or Italian films -- there was no room for both Jules and Jim and Sundays and Cybele. Instead, the rosters in those early years would include whatever films those countries with minor capability could produce (even the hamstrung Germany managed a few), because the rules said five countries had to be represented.

This is what led to the many today-unknown films that dws references. In the first two decades or so of the foreign-language category (including the Honorary years), I've seen all the winners except the Samurai film that won in 1955. But the number of non-winning films I've ever tracked down is small: Big Deal on Madonna Street (aka The Usual Unidentified Thieves), Kapo, The Four Days of Naples, Knife in the Water. It wasn't till 1964 that the nominated titles start getting familiar (possibly owing to my being older and more aware of foreign-language films, but I'm not sure of that).

I'm going to make this an uncharacteristically brief post, and save further ruminations on nominated films for a later post. This is just to get things started.