Cinema '62: Best Actor

This is my last post on a Peter O'Toole Oscar nomination! I've managed to watch them all, my thoughts on each are linked below (except for Venus, which I think I reviewed on my long-defunct LiveJournal; at the first-ever Hollmann Awards, its one acting nomination went to Leslie Phillips in Supporting). Naturally, I saved his first for last, because...well, that's just the way it worked out.

Indeed, I've managed to discuss all these actors before. They are favorites of Oscar: a total of 28 nominations, an average of 5.6 noms per actor! Not that those always translated to wins: only four statues among all five, and two of them were Jack Lemmon's. Still, compare that to 1962's Supporting Actor, a five-wide race of one-and-doners; or Supporting Actress, where both first-time nominees were also one-time nominees; or Lead Actress, where...oh, we're talking about that tomorrow. 

In the meantime, the nominees for Best Actor:

Cinema '62: Best Original Screenplay

For the second year in a row, non-English language films dominate the Original Screenplay race. Last Year at Marienbad had been submitted by France for Best Foreign Language Film consideration the year before; beautiful yet inscrutable (to me), it's the kind of film people picture when they say "art film." Through a Glass Darkly won Best Foreign Language Film the previous year for Sweden, a Bergman film dealing with a family on the verge of collapse. And then there's the previously-discussed Divorce Italian Style, not even submitted for Foreign Language Film consideration, just a hit!

Joining them are the biopic Freud and That Touch of Mink, a rom-com in the Rock Hudson-Doris Day-Tony Randall style but with Cary Grant instead of Hudson, Gig Young instead of Randall. Day remains, thank goodness. 

The nominees:

Cinema '62: Best Director

Although we've seen this before, rare indeed is the Best Director lineup where the majority of nominees are representing films not nominated for Best Picture. Indeed, I believe since the category went five-wide in 1936, three lone directors have only occurred five times: 1954, 1955, 1962, 1963, 1966. Curious that they're all within a 12-year span, coinciding with the winnowing-away of the Hays Code and the growing appreciation for international cinema. 

The lone directing nominees here represent David and Lisa, a drama about youths in a residential home for mental health issues; Divorce Italian Style, an Italian comedy about a man who plots the death of his wife so he can seduce his teenage cousin; and The Miracle Worker, a surprise Best Picture snub, about Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller how to communicate. The directors "snubbed" are The Longest Day's triumvirate of Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki (with significant though uncredited contributions from Gerd Oswald and Darryl F. Zanuck); The Music Man's Morton DaCosta; and Mutiny on the Bounty's Lewis Milestone (with uncredited filming from Carol Reed, who was fired mid-production). Here's who made it: