The Oscars and Show Business Movies: A Love Story
Birdman was the big winner at the 87th Academy Awards, tying for most awards won and also taking home two of the biggest awards: Best Picture and Best Director. That it won Best Picture shouldn’t have been a surprise, especially given the Academy’s recent track record. It almost should have been expected. In recent years, the Academy has kept up with a regular trend: they love films about show business. Films about films or other aspects of show business have become increasingly popular with Academy voters.
Birdman was the fifth showbiz film in the past twelve years to win Best Picture. Although there was a bit of a gap after Chicago won at the 75th awards, the trend has only picked up since then. Just in the last six years alone, a showbiz film has won Best Picture four times. And this isn’t the first time that the Academy has done this either. From the very beginning, it has often found itself in the same trend.
The Early Years
In the early years of the Academy Awards, westerns and war films often took home the top prize. Along with that, show business films also fared well as Best Picture. Twice in seven years they took home the award: The Broadway Melody and The Great Ziegfeld. Both were similar in the sense that they were celebrations of elaborate musicals. And given that both came about in the early years of sound, it’s easy to see why spectacular musicals would resonate with audiences at the time. In both years, another showbiz film was up for Best Picture as well: The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Nominated alongside The Broadway Melody, it didn’t exactly stray too far from the general idea of the film that ended up winning the award.
The next trend of this kind came when showbiz films won Best Picture three years in a row to start off the 1950’s. At the time, All About Eve set a new record of 14 nominations, along with six total wins. It was also notable in that it portrayed the entertainment world a lot differently than the previous winners. This time, the curtain was pulled back even further, taking a look at the darker sides of fame. That same year, Sunset Boulevard also had great success, glimpsing more into the dark underside of Hollywood.
An American in Paris won the next year, followed by The Greatest Show on Earth. Neither one of them took the same critical eye to show business, and their reputations have also taken very different paths over the years. Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, an epic look at a circus, has often found its way onto lists of the worst Best Picture winners. It has even be speculated that it won more as a thank you to DeMille for his contributions to Hollywood.
Similar, But Different
As for the types of show business films in this latest trend, they haven’t adhered to any kind of theme. While The Artist, for instance, was certainly a celebration of film, Birdman took a more critical look towards the importance of such things as reviews and critical acclaim. But one thing that has been unique about the trend is this: these are films about show business that are told in unique ways.
Sure, these films may all have treaded in similar subject matter, but they each handled their subject differently. The Artist created the first mainstream silent film in decades, while Slumdog Millionaire and Argo used film and entertainment as a jumping off point to tell gripping stories separate from that framework. And Birdman’s shooting style alone brought something new that had rarely been seen in film. While some of the early winners and nominees could be accused of having been too similar or not very gripping, that certainly can’t be said for this latest batch of showbiz winners, which have all been remarkably unique.
As far as the future goes, will the trend continue? It’s early in 2015, but there are already showbiz films on the horizon with potential. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the story of a friendship between a filmmaker and a girl with cancer, is already generating a fair amount of buzz after its premiere at Sundance Film Festival. Similarly, Knight of Cups, with a screenwriter as the main character, is coming off a nice showing at the Berlin International Film Festival. Look out for these films as a possible continuation of the trend.
What do you think of this recent trend? Are these films different enough, or should the Academy expand their horizons? Let us know in the comments!
(top image: Birdman – source: Fox Searchlight Pictures)
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