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WINNERS
ARE A NOD TO HOLLYWOOD GLORY:
Oscar
smiles on classical moviemaking
By
Michael Sragow
February
28, 2005
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It was a replay
of the 1976 Oscars, when a boxing movie named Rocky, written
by and starring Sylvester Stallone, beat out Scorsese's Taxi
Driver.
This year, a boxing film directed by and starring another
action icon, Clint Eastwood, beat out Scorsese's The
Aviator. The loss left Scorsese at 0 for 5, the same
Oscars record as Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman.
On a night when the academy promised to pay tribute to the
old and new, Million Dollar Baby proved to be the
voters' idea of a character-centered, emotional movie.
Best actor Jamie Foxx earned the warmest reception of the
night for playing Ray Charles in Ray - and, in his
acceptance, told of actor Sidney Poitier's bequeathing him
some of the older African-American star's sense of
"responsibility."
The most overdue prize went to another great
African-American talent, Morgan Freeman, best supporting
actor for Million Dollar Baby. His ingratiating turn
as a kindly gym manager wasn't in the same league as his
previous nominated performances as the pimp in Street
Smart (1987), the chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy
(1989) and the convict in The Shawshank Redemption
(1994).
Yet as the awards for Freeman, Hilary Swank as best actress
and Eastwood as best director made clear, academy members
considered Million Dollar Baby classical American
moviemaking. Only a few critics felt that its labored,
obvious trudge to a heavyhanded twist was more like a remote
memory of any old studio boxing picture - and that the
reverence for Eastwood was a sign of aging baby boomers
giving into geezer chic.
It would have been the perfect night for Scorsese to bring
home the prize. Sidney Lumet, the New York director of the
late 20th century, won an honorary Oscar and saluted
Scorsese in his remarks.
Watching clips from Lumet pictures such as Serpico
and Dog Day Afternoon, you felt the kinetics of Lumet
catching character in motion. But you also sensed the energy
of a filmmaker feeding off an explosive city, as Scorsese
did in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and Raging
Bull.
Scorsese, a vocal advocate for film preservation, was the
perfect presenter for the Jean Hersholt Humanitiarian Award
to Roger Mayer, founder of the National Film Preservation
Foundation.
And the dominance of Scorsese's film in the prime craft
categories helped the academy make good on the pledge it
made during the opening split-screen montage of classic and
contemporary movies - that it would deliver an evening
marrying film past to film present.
Many of the winners brought new life to the honorable
Hollywood legacies of trompe l'oeil wizardry and creative
glamour, most hilariously Brad Bird, the writer-director of
the best animated feature The Incredibles. Bird
imparted the snap and brilliance of a Buster Keaton comedy
or a Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler to a computer-animated
action comedy. With that supercharged pixie Edna Mode,
costume wizard to the title superheroes, he also created and
gave voice to an uproarious tribute to Hollywood wardrobe
legend Edith Head.
Cate Blanchett's Katharine Hepburn was only one of many
skillful and flamboyant homages to the Golden Ages of
Hollywood and international cinema that won prizes for The
Aviator. The art direction of Dante Ferretti (who began his
career working for Fellini) and the editing of Thelma
Schoonmaker (the widow of that towering British director
Michael Powell) helped Scorsese use contemporary tools,
including digital wizardry, not to just to blow an
audience's collective mind but also to expand it - both to
put viewers in the middle of extreme experience, just as
Howard Hughes did in Hells Angels, and to give them
the feel of bygone eras.
But it was Million Dollar Baby's night, and Freeman
voiced his delight that two more wins for African-Americans
(himself and Foxx) mean that Hollywood is "evolving
with the rest of the world."
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