The Year of the Drunk: Best Actor, 1983

If you wanted a nomination in 1983, all you had to do was open a bottle. Of the five nominees for Best Actor, four of them are hard drinkers, whether active or reformed.

In Educating Rita, Michael Caine plays Frank Bryant, a literature professor who begins private tutoring sessions with a working-class woman. His failure as a poet has brought him to the bottle - he keeps a stash behind a copy of alcohol epic The Lost Weekend. The drink has driven his girlfriend right into the arms of one of his colleagues. Did I mention it's a comedy?

In Reuben, Reuben, Tom Conti plays another poet, Gowan McGland of Scotland, based largely on poet/womanizer/alcoholic Dylan Thomas. He comes to a small town in New England to give talks and lectures, and seduce the local bored wives. The Reuben of the title is a dog Gowan befriends; his owner is the grandfather of a much younger woman Gowan falls in love with. This is Conti's first and only nomination.

Tom Courtenay is the title character of The Dresser, whose entire life is devoted to serving a Great Shakespearean Actor - and in between breakdowns, comforts, truth-tellings, bitching, and gossip, he nips from a bottle, and is quick to replenish the supply when he runs out. Albert Finney, as the Great Shakespearean Actor, does not need to imbibe, for he is already losing his mind, and surely that's just one bit of madness too many.

In Tender Mercies, Robert Duvall plays former country music star Mac Sledge - he has hit rock bottom at the film's beginning, and is more or less forced to sober up by the widow he eventually falls in love with. It's distinct from the rest for a number of reasons: the other performances are from films based on plays (Reuben, Reuben is based on a play and a novel), whereas Tender Mercies is an original screenplay. Not only that: of the five, Duvall's the only American!

Small wonder, then, that he won.

Hollywood toasting a native son? Or was he truly deserving? My thoughts, after the jump.

Cinema '65: The Brother and the Revolutionary

Sometimes the nominees for Best Supporting Actor are honest to God character actors in supporting roles, instead of character actors in leading roles (J.K. Simmons in Whiplash), or A-Listers "slumming" it in character roles (Bradley Cooper in American Hustle). The year 1965 is almost there, but Oscar will be Oscar, and so...

I always do a DDL Test with supporting actor nominees -- if Daniel Day-Lewis played it, would it still be supporting? In the case of Frank Finlay as Iago in Othello, I think not; otherwise, though, most definitely. And he'd probably win each time, too.

Everyone here was on their first nomination -- though at the time, Martin Balsam felt his nomination was also due to his being "snubbed" for Breakfast at Tiffany's. Maybe he was right -- certainly enough goodwill and excitement had built up around him, and he walked away with the Oscar.

He's better with a mustache, I think

As for the others -- Michael Dunn becomes the first Little Person (I believe) nominated for an Oscar, Ian Bannen's double duty in The Flight of the Phoenix and The Hill nets him a nod for the former, Tom Courtenay lands the first of two career nominations so far (perhaps 45 Years will change things?), and Frank Finlay is nominated, too.

After the jump.