1948: Best Picture

Finally, Best Picture of 1948. Honestly, not one of the strongest lineups. There are two clear-cut masterpieces, alongside three films whose craftsmanship is undeniably good, but as movies...just overall not my thing, I guess. There are lots of films from this year I'd rank above...but we'll get there, never you mind about that now.

The nominees:

1948: Best Actress

One of my friends told me this was the category he was most interested to see my take on. Let's hope he is not disappointed: 

1948: Best Score

The nominees for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture consist of four Best Picture nominees and Joan of Arc. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre did not make it here, though its composer, Max Steiner, was nominated for Johnny Belinda. And only one composer was showing up for the first time - and wound up winning! The nominees:

1948: Best Screenplay

The closest equivalent to Adapted Screenplay at the 1948 Academy Awards is just plain Screenplay, differentiating itself from Original Story by honoring the writers of the script itself - the dialogue, the stage directions, the INT./EXT., all that. For some reason (and we mentioned this before) the people who wrote both the story and the screenplay did not get their own category his year, so the writers of The Search found themselves winning one category and being nominated in the other. Here it is, alongside another original (albeit with three screenwriters working off a fourth person's story) and three direct adaptations. But you can see that for yourself:

1948: Best Director

Got to this a couple days late, but here we go: Best Director, 1948.

Actually, before we get to the nominees - did you know this was also the first year that the Directors Guild of America gave out competitive awards? What was going on that everyone suddenly wanted their own trophies? 

There were only four nominees that first year, only half of whom were also nominated at the 21st Academy Awards: Anatole Litvak for The Snake Pit and Fred Zinnemann for The Search. The other two were Howard Hawks for Red River and Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives...a 1949 film. Mankiewicz would repeat his win at the 22nd Academy Awards, while the winner of the 1948 Oscar wasn't even nominated at the DGA Awards. Go figure!

Here are Oscar's nominees: