Categories One-by-One: Director

[Big Magilla]

So, Lynch is the closest to a living Hitchcock or Hawks with no competitive win but an honorary Oscar.

Fincher and Anderson still have thriving careers and could/should? at some point actually win something.

In my book, Lynch should have won for Mulholland Dr., Anderson should have won for There Will Be Blood, and Fincher should have won for both The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network.

[anonymous1980]

My burning question, though, is who are this era's Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks? Both received honorary awards, but neither won a competitive one. Hitchcock was a five-time nominee. Hawks, who might have had half a dozen nominations, received just one, and that for a film that was arguably not his best of even that year.

I looked this up. The one living director who has the most nominations without a win is Peter Weir, who has 4. But he hasn't made a film in over ten years. He's currently 77 so unless the reason he's not making films is ill health, it's still possible he might make one last one. After that, a whole bunch of filmmakers have three Best Director nominations without a win: David Fincher, David O. Russell, Stephen Daldry, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ridley Scott, James Ivory, Alexander Payne, Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch. Ivory, Payne and Tarantino all have Screenplay Oscars while Lynch has an Honorary Oscar.

[Big Magilla]

I doubt anyone in my lifetime will match John Ford's four wins. Spielberg, I suppose, could match Capra and Wilder's three but it would be a long shot.

My burning question, though, is who are this era's Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks? Both received honorary awards, but neither won a competitive one. Hitchcock was a five-time nominee. Hawks, who might have had half a dozen nominations, received just one, and that for a film that was arguably not his best of even that year. I would have nominated him for The Dawn Patrol, Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire (over Sergeant York), and Red River and given him the award for either Scarface or Bringing Up Baby.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
But there were also more one-and-done's in that 17-year stretch than in the entire first 39 years: Franklin Schaffner, John Avildsen, Michael Cimino, Richard Attenborough, and James L. Brooks (though one can argue Brooks was robbed in 1987).

I would hope everyone would argue that.

Great post.

[Mister Tee]

I feel like I'm taking all the gimmes this year.

The nominees:
Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)
Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)

For the third time in the past four years, the best director prize has become one of the most consensus-driven: Cuaron '18 and Zhao '20 were such overwhelming choices from critics' groups -- both prestigious and secondary -- that the TV awarders and DGA fell right in line, leading easily to the Oscar. Campion has had a marginally bumpier road, with Hamguchi taking old-line critics' prizes. But I'd say the general feeling is, that was only enough to guarantee his nomination: when it comes to the win, Campion is an overwhelming favorite in this category (regardless of what happens in the best picture melee). I hear a few people saying to watch out for Spielberg, and I guess, if you need to find a second-place finisher, he makes most sense. But I think Campion is one of the locks on the night.

Since there's so little to say about this year's contest, a little noodling on the history of the category, which interests me, if no one else.

Perhaps I notice this largely because, in the first five years I watched the Oscars, I saw three directors (Lean, Wise, Zinnemann) win their second prizes in the category...but it's really remarkable how, in the first almost-four-decades of the awards, repeating directors were vastly the norm, not the exception. Of the first 39 Oscars for directing (through 1966), a mere 9 went to people (all men, then) who ended up with only one prize. John Ford's 4 of course leads the pack, with Capra and Wyler's 3 right behind. But 10 more guys won twice over that period (Borzage, Lloyd, McCarey, Wilder, Kazan, Mankiewicz, Stevens, Lean, Wise, Zinnemann). Moreover, of the 9 shamefully held to a single prize, 6 had additional nominations in the category, whether prior (Curtiz, Minnelli, Cukor) or subsequent (Milestone, Taurog, Huston). A mere 3 directing winners over that stretch were one-and-done: Victor Fleming (about whom there's some doubt how much of Gone with the Wind he directed), Delbert Mann, and Tony Richardson.

What makes that stretch even more remarkable is how suddenly and utterly it came to a halt. For the 17 years following 1966, we had a new winner every single year; until '75 winner Milos Forman triumphed again in 1984, no one repeated (and not one of those other 16 managed a second win any year after 1984). There were numerous winning directors who had multiple nominations -- Nichols, Reed, Schlesinger, Fosse, Coppola, Allen, etc. But there were also more one-and-done's in that 17-year stretch than in the entire first 39 years: Franklin Schaffner, John Avildsen, Michael Cimino, Richard Attenborough, and James L. Brooks (though one can argue Brooks was robbed in 1987).

Once Forman broke the ice with his second win, the Academy reverted back to the repeater tendency: Oliver Stone, Spielberg, Eastwood, Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro G. Innaritu have all won twice, making this era a bit more like the early years than that anomalous 17-year stretch. Assuming Jane Campion wins Sunday night, she'll be in that second-tier -- Won Once but Also Nominated Elsewhere -- alongside such as Pollack, Bertolucci, Levinson, Cameron, Polanski, Scorsese, Coens, etc. There are also, at the moment, a fair number of one-and-done's over this stretch; a few (Demme, Minghella) are gone and won't be upping their totals; others (Costner, Zemeckis, Hooper) have fallen out of favor, and seem unlikely to return. But you never know about the rest: Mendes and the dread Gibson made unexpected reappearances. And among the younger set, who would be surprised to see Boyle, Bigelow, Chazelle, DelToro, Zhao return, possibly wining a second time? (Bigelow has already been robbed of one.)

Again, this may not interest anyone but me, but it's something to say about the best director category in a year where competition seems to be absent.