“I know what you’re thinking, punk . . . Did he win six Oscars, or only five?”
In fact, Clint Eastwood’s complex, searing Western “Unforgiven” brought home four Academy Awards from Monday night’s ceremony in Los Angeles, including best picture and best director. But they will stand among the most deeply deserved citations in the Academy’s 65-year history.
“This is pretty good,” said Eastwood, accepting his director’s award from Barbra Streisand. “This is all right.”
Eastwood represents the kind of home-grown American artistry-natural, forceful, unpretentious-that embodies what’s best and most characteristic in the Hollywood tradition.
Working comfortably within the commercial genres that are the backbone of the American cinema-notably, the cop movie and the western-Eastwood is one of the last survivors of a vanishing breed of filmmakers who were able to combine personal expression and popular appeal, individuals such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Howard Hawks.
But Hollywood has seldom respected its own, preferring to endorse more culturally approved interlopers from the literary, theatrical and-whenever possible-British establishments.
That tradition was upheld by the British-made “Howards End,” which took home awards for adapted screenplay, art direction and best actress for Emma Thompson, and by “The Crying Game,” which won a best original screenplay award for Neil Jordan.
Thompson, 34, became the fourth U.K. acting winner in the last four years, following Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and Anthony Hopkins. By far the front-runner, Thompson proved she deserved her award by looking convincingly surprised when her name was announced.
Winning for best actor, on his eighth career nomination (including two this year), was Al Pacino, for his work as a lusty, sightless military officer in “Scent of a Woman.”
Though the role was far from Pacino’s best or subtlest work, it did set some kind of record for sure-fire Oscar elements: Pacino’s character was (1) physically challenged, (2) alcoholic, (3) equipped with an accent, and had scenes in which he (4) threatened suicide, (5) argued a courtroom case and (6) danced a tango, any one of which would normally be enough to earn an Oscar nod.
Marisa Tomei, a surprise winner in the supporting actress category for her gum-popping Brooklynite in “My Cousin Vinnie,” accepted her Oscar with a display of the sparkling candor that seems likely to make her a major star in the tradition of the evening’s much-evoked Audrey Hepburn.
“The Crying Game,” a critical favorite that had been tagged a dark horse contender for major awards, finished the evening with only its single screenplay award.
“Unforgiven” is only the third western to win the best picture Oscar, following “Cimarron” in 1930 and “Dances with Wolves” in 1990 (“Midnight Cowboy” doesn’t count). The film also won Oscars for supporting actor Gene Hackman and film editor Joel Cox.
Eastwood, ironically, is the same age, 62, as John Wayne was when he won his sole Oscar, as best actor in the uncomfortably self-parodic “True Grit” in 1969.
Though the Academy proclaimed this year’s theme to be “Women and the Movies,” it wasn’t a concept that came through in the actual list of award nominees. Among the genderless, non-acting categories, few women were nominated outside the traditional ghettos of makeup, costume design, set decoration and documentary production, with only Ruth Prawer Jhabvala awarded in a major creative category, for her adapted screenplay for “Howards End.”
Special tributes were paid to female screenwriters and film editors (this year’s sole nominee: Geraldine Peroni for “The Player,” who did not win), costume designer Edith Head and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award co-winners Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Hepburn, who died earlier this year, was cited for her work with UNICEF (her son Sean accepted); Taylor for her work against AIDS.
Winning in the foreign-language film category was “Indochine,” Regis Wargnier’s epic romance set in French colonial Vietnam. It was the ninth time a French feature has won the award, a record equaled only by Italy.
Italian stars Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren presented an honorary Oscar to director Federico Fellini, whose “La Strada” was the first film to win the foreign-language film Oscar when the category was made competitive in 1956.
In his fourth outing as host, Billy Crystal continued to entertain with an effective mix of in-jokes and sentimental pitches, though he’s now been around long enough to start milking his running gags from year to year-the opening medley, with puns on the nominated titles; the car alarm; Jack Palance.
Reliably, the production numbers for the nominated songs proved to be as timelessly tacky as ever, with “Aladdin’s” “Whole New World” emerging as a gothic Peter Greenaway fantasy populated by contortionist nymphets and “The Mambo Kings’ ” “Beautiful Maria of My Soul” performed by an excessively game, get-down-and-boogie Placido Domingo.
The evening’s spaciest moment was contributed by presenter Richard Gere, who surrealistically wondered whether China’s Deng Xiaoping was watching the broadcast and asked the audience to project waves of love through the air, in the hope that the Chinese leader would feel moved to liberate Tibet. At deadline, no word was available on Gere’s success.
The technical awards were widely spread among a number of features, including “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (sound effects editing, makeup, costume design), “Unforgiven” (film editing), “Howards End” (art direction), “Death Becomes Her” (visual effects), “Last of the Mohicans” (sound), “A River Runs through It” (cinematography).
The documentary feature category was a subject of controversey this year because of the Academy’s failure to nominate several commercially successful titles, including “Brother’s Keeper” and “A Brief History of Time.” The winner was “The Panama Deception” by Barbara Trent, a film that suggests the U.S. government underreported the actual number of casualties in the Panama invasion. “Educating Peter,” produced by Thomas C. Goodwin and Gerardine Wrzburg, was cited as best documentary short.
Both musical awards-for original score and original song (“Whole New World”)-went to the Disney animated feature “Aladdin.” The music was by Alan Menken, the lyrics by Tim Rice.
The award for live action short went to “Ominibus”; for animated short to “Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase.”
