1948: Motion Picture Story

Last week, we discussed the films of 1948 in general - well, 75 of them, at least. For the next two weeks, we look at what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deemed, specifically, the best of the best. Starting today with Best Original Motion Picture Story.

In 1948, there is no Best Original Screenplay category or even a Best Story & Screenplay category. There is merely Original Story - made up of, yes, original storylines - and Screenplay - made up of screenplays based either on pre-existing work or aforementioned Original Stories. This is slightly unusual because although this delineation between writing a story (or treatment, outlining the events and arc of the plot) and writing a screenplay (the script itself with dialogue and all that) existed for some time, a category for writers who wrote both Story and Screenplay existed both before and after 1948. I'd love to know why, this one year was the exception.

Anyway, here's who they nominated:

1948: An Auspicious Start

Of the hundreds of films that qualified for the 21st Academy Awards, I watched 75. Over the next few days - indeed, starting yesterday - I'm going to talk about those films and my reactions to them, thirteen a day, in order of release - excepting, of course, the five nominees for Best Picture, which I'll get into when I discuss that category on July 20th.

I will mention, though, an interesting fact. Much has been made of Everything Everywhere All At Once sustaining its buzz from its debut at South By Southwest on March 11, 2022, through its theatrical release 14 days later, all the way to being named Best Picture on March 12, 2023, a year and a day later. It is impressive, if only because the Academy tends to be biased in favor of later releases. The year 1948 was no exception - three of the five Best Picture nominees, including the winner, came out in the last quarter. Still, it's impressive that one of those other two nominees came out right at the beginning of the year.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre had its Los Angeles premiere January 14th, 1948, before receiving general release ten days later. In the Los Angeles Times review dated January 15th, Edwin Schallert called it "curiously powerful" and predicted that Walter Huston's performance as an old prospector "would be on the next nominations list, were it not for the fact that [the film] belongs to 1948 rather than 1947." Schallert was right, though: not only did Huston père receive one of the film's four Oscar nominations, he also accounts for one of its three wins. And this was a year when the Awards were held in late March (in fact, a year and two months to the day following its general release)! Director-screenwriter John Huston also found himself up for two WGA Awards: Best Western (a win!) and Best Drama (a loss, to The Snake Pit).

That's how the film year of 1948 started. Here's what came after: