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00:00And the winner is...
00:02Filmmakers love awards.
00:04They love handing awards out.
00:06They even love making films about awards.
00:09But above all, they love winning awards.
00:11And the most coveted are those given by the American Academy
00:14of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars.
00:17The highest award within our power to bestow.
00:202019 sees the 91st Academy Awards,
00:23and speculation is as fevered as ever as to which of this year's
00:26contenders will scoop the big prizes.
00:30It's just too late to turn back now.
00:38Throw!
00:43I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.
00:50Stop worrying and think how nice that statuette's going to look
00:53on your mantelpiece.
00:54Over the course of nine decades,
00:56patterns have emerged in Oscar's tastes.
00:59He prefers some kinds of films to others.
01:02They add up to a set of mini-genres in their own right,
01:06with their own rules and hidden structures.
01:09Are you not entertained?!
01:11Are you not entertained?!
01:13And if you can nail those,
01:15well, then it's time to start practising your acceptance speech.
01:18Thank you for believing in me.
01:20So, ladies and gentlemen, roll out the red carpet and take your seats,
01:24because tonight I'll be revealing the secrets of winning an Oscar.
01:28Oscar goes to...
01:32Yes!
01:50Good evening, Mr Cain!
01:52There is a man! There is a man!
01:54A certain man! A certain man!
01:56You may be sure that he'll do all he can!
01:59Now, bear with me for a moment while I get a few things off my chest.
02:03All awards are essentially foolish,
02:05but none more so than the Oscars.
02:08For proof, consider this.
02:10In 1942, Citizen Cain didn't win the Oscar for Best Picture,
02:15but in 1990, Driving Miss Daisy did.
02:18Just think about that for a moment
02:20and try to imagine a world in which Driving Miss Daisy
02:23wasn't the best film you were going to see that year.
02:26What are you doing?
02:28I'm trying to drive you to the stove!
02:31Or even the best Morgan Freeman film of the year.
02:35In fact, when it first opened in the US in December 1989,
02:38Driving Miss Daisy wasn't even the best Morgan Freeman film of the week.
02:42Amen!
02:44That was Ed Zwick's Glory,
02:46a drama about the American Civil War's first all-black volunteer company.
02:50But Oscar thought otherwise.
02:53Ask any film fan how seriously you should take the Academy Awards
02:57and chances are they'll remind you that Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles...
03:02They've been making statues for 2,000 years
03:05and I've only been buying for five.
03:07..David Lynch...
03:09Arrangements are being made
03:11and I will meet you at the private Portland airport.
03:14OK, Gordon.
03:16..and, most famously, Alfred Hitchcock never won a Best Director Oscar.
03:21Nor did Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick or, so far, Jane Campion.
03:26In 2014, Steve McQueen became the first black filmmaker
03:30ever to bag a Best Picture Oscar with 12 Years A Slave.
03:34Although he was beaten to Best Director, as was Barry Jenkins,
03:37so if Spike Lee wins this year, that'll be a first.
03:40Women have traditionally been shut out of the festivities too.
03:44It wasn't until 2010 that Catherine Bigelow finally broke the glass ceiling
03:49in the Best Director category with The Hurt Locker.
04:00This year, the Best Director list is, once again, all male.
04:04Worth noting, too, that no animated feature has ever won Best Picture.
04:09And if Roma gets the top prize this year,
04:12it'll be the first film made entirely in a foreign language ever to do so.
04:17The Academy Awards are hardly cutting edge.
04:20And yet, in the past few years,
04:22I've found myself cheering Oscar Best Picture winners, like Moonlight.
04:26And, most recently, The Shape Of Water,
04:29suggesting that either I'm getting soft or the Oscars are getting better.
04:33And, like it or not, the Oscars do mean something.
04:37Not least because they've created a canon of films
04:40about which we can have a good old-fashioned argument.
04:44And underpinning that canon is a whole set of secrets of cinema,
04:49because certain kinds of films, certain themes,
04:52particular types of character, win again and again.
04:56So, let's take a look at Oscars favourites,
04:59beginning with the oldest of all.
05:02MUSIC PLAYS
05:10At the 1979 Academy Awards, the two most talked-about nominations
05:14were for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter and Hal Ashby's Coming Home.
05:19Both took on the most painful and divisive event
05:22in recent American history, the Vietnam War.
05:25Now, while there'd been a whole raft of violent movies
05:28like Deliverance and Straw Dogs
05:30that could be read as thinly-veiled allegories,
05:33honouring films like Coming Home and The Deer Hunter,
05:36which faced the traumas of Vietnam head-on,
05:39looked like a daring move on the part of the Academy.
05:42But, in fact, they were variations on a favourite Oscar formula,
05:46the War Is Hell film.
05:49It was a film about World War I, William Wellman's Wings,
05:52that triumphed at the debut ceremony in 1929.
05:56And while it may be 50 years older,
05:58Wings has a lot in common with The Deer Hunter.
06:01Both films begin by establishing their main characters
06:04in their pre-war civilian lives.
06:06Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage
06:09work at a steel plant.
06:11For all the drinking and swearing, in their own way,
06:14they're as untested and innocent
06:16as Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen's love rivals in Wings.
06:20What unites these characters
06:22is that they have no idea what's about to hit them.
06:26The carnage and suffering of their military service
06:29is depicted in unflinching detail.
06:32These films have much in common with rites-of-passage movies,
06:35tapping deep into the idea of loss of innocence.
06:40That isn't the kind of theme
06:42that preoccupies the makers of popular war films
06:45like The Guns Of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare.
06:48But awards winners have to deliver
06:50more than men-on-a-mission thrills.
06:52They have to say something about the human condition,
06:55usually that war is hell and even its heroes are martyrs.
06:59Note how many Oscar winners
07:01climax with the death of a protagonist
07:04or a significant major character.
07:11Look at All Quiet On The Western Front,
07:13which won the third-ever Best Picture award in 1930.
07:23Luair's young hero is almost casually potted by a sniper
07:27as he reaches for a butterfly.
07:29It's tragic and symbolic.
07:32In The Deer Hunter,
07:33Cimino makes great play of the titular veteran lining up
07:36but then sparing his prey
07:38because of his traumatic experiences in battle,
07:41another symbolic moment.
07:44OK.
07:45So, for all its supposedly edgy and challenging subject matter,
07:49The Deer Hunter draws on reliable Oscar-winning precedence,
07:53as does Coming Home.
07:56Luke?
08:00Can I come in?
08:01On the surface, this looks like a very different kind of film.
08:05How you doing?
08:08It centres on the romance between Jane Fonda's military wife
08:12and John Voight's paraplegic veteran
08:14and it's set in California.
08:16But it also echoes an earlier Oscar-garnered film
08:19that was a huge hit with audiences as well.
08:26The old hometown hasn't changed very much, has it?
08:28No.
08:29It's still the same.
08:30It's still the same.
08:31It's still the same.
08:32It's still the same.
08:33It's still the same.
08:34The old hometown hasn't changed very much, has it?
08:36No.
08:38William Wyler's The Best Years Of Our Lives
08:40is the story of three servicemen returning home after World War II.
08:44Although it's set entirely on civvy streets,
08:46like Coming Home, it's a powerful study of the cost of war.
08:51Cheers!
08:52Frederick March's infantryman-cum-banker Al struggles with alcohol...
08:56Aren't you drinking?
09:00Gagoski, get out of that plane!
09:03..and the post-traumatic stress of Air Force Captain Fred,
09:06played by Dana Andrews, is vividly evoked
09:09using music and sound effects.
09:11Gagoski! Wake up!
09:12Gagoski! Wake up!
09:13She's burning up! Get out! Get out!
09:15I've learned how to take this harness off.
09:20Ex-sailor Homer is the most obvious casualty of the three,
09:23having lost his hands and then had them replaced by prosthetic hooks.
09:27Non-professional actor Harold Russell was an actual double amputee
09:31as a result of his own military service.
09:34The film garnered an extraordinary eight Oscars,
09:36including one honorary award.
09:38Bullshit! Bullshit!
09:40Coming Home scored just three, with Jon Voight and Jane Fonda
09:43scooping Best Actor and Actress alongside a Best Screenplay win.
09:47Now, in my opinion, the fact that Coming Home didn't win
09:50Best Picture in 79 and The Deer Hunter did
09:53is also one of the great injustices of Oscar history.
09:56Say something else, fuck.
10:02I'm not the enemy.
10:04But perhaps the victory of The Deer Hunter,
10:07a film which was dogged with allegations of hysterical racism
10:11and exploitative xenophobia,
10:13tells us something else about the Academy Awards,
10:16that flag-waving is always a favourite.
10:21In 1987, nearly a decade after The Deer Hunter's triumph,
10:25Platoon won four Oscars,
10:29including Best Picture and Best Director for Oliver Stone,
10:33who, unlike Cimino, had seen active combat in Vietnam,
10:37earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
10:44Platoon ticks a typical war-is-hell box
10:47by focusing on Charlie Sheen's newly-arrived infantry volunteer
10:50Chris Taylor, a figure of innocence
10:53and a clear stand-in for Stone himself.
10:57Chris is quickly caught up in a highly symbolic conflict
11:00between Tom Berringer's brutal Staff Sergeant Barnes
11:03and Willem Dafoe's kindly and humane Sergeant Elias.
11:19In fact, the film is so explicitly symbolic
11:22that when Elias is betrayed,
11:24he meets his death in a cruciform pose,
11:27as if Dafoe was auditioning for his subsequent lead role
11:30in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.
11:35Unlike many previous winners,
11:37Platoon featured no scenes set back at home
11:40and focused almost exclusively on the tripwire,
11:43life-or-death struggles of its male characters.
11:46And although they're very different movies,
11:48Stone's film laid the ground for a much more recent Oscar winner.
11:53The Hurt Locker swaps the jungles of South East Asia
11:56for dusty, bleached-out Baghdad.
12:00Unlike Platoon, it's not a movie about loss of innocence.
12:03The explosive ordnance disposal team it follows
12:06are experienced, highly-trained soldiers
12:09and much of the film's fascination lies in the detail
12:12of how they disarm a range of deadly devices.
12:16Oh, boy.
12:20But see how, like Stone's movie,
12:22The Hurt Locker vividly evokes the day-to-day job of a soldier,
12:26the daily grind of dangerous assignments.
12:29Get out of the way.
12:31And despite Bigelow's documentary-like approach,
12:34the film is still peppered with moments of familiar cinematic symbolism.
12:38Is this fiery inferno reminding us that war is war?
12:43Is this fiery inferno reminding us that war is hell?
12:49We've already seen that the first and third Best Picture Oscars
12:52went to war films,
12:54but the second winner, in 1930,
12:57established a very different Academy favourite.
13:01BANG
13:11Not only was The Broadway Melody the first musical to win Best Picture,
13:15it was also the first talkie to do so.
13:18Queenie, I don't want you to answer me like that again.
13:20Then keep your nose out of my business.
13:22Well, your business is my business.
13:24The Broadway Melody proved the perfect vehicle
13:27to showcase the possibilities of full-sound pictures,
13:30a talking, singing, dancing, dramatic sensation.
13:34Look at the fancy laces, look at the fancy laces,
13:36look at them as they smile,
13:39all startled away.
13:44Since then, the musical has remained a firm favourite with the Academy.
13:49Over the years, the Best Picture award
13:51has gone to such splashy, super-produced hits as
13:54Gigi, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Oliver and Chicago.
14:09Now, it's worth reminding ourselves
14:11that the actual subjects of these films
14:13were, respectively, sexual grooming, juvenile gang violence,
14:17Nazi oppression, child slavery and a murder trial.
14:22But, let's be honest, we tend to forget all that heavy stuff
14:25and concentrate instead on the delights of musical winners,
14:29the songs and dances and often the cutting-edge
14:33and even experimental cinematic techniques.
14:36Like the 20-minute ballet featuring homages to Impressionist painters
14:40which Gene Kelly cooked up in Vincent Minnelli's An American in Paris.
14:45Or the superb on-location choreography of Jerome Robbins
14:49in Robert Wise's West Side Story.
14:52And, of course, that dizzying mountain shot
14:55from the opening of The Sound of Music.
15:00The hills are alive with the sound of music.
15:07It doesn't matter that many of these winners
15:09were originally created for the stage.
15:11Translated to the big screen,
15:13they become a showcase for what cinema can do.
15:16How can the Academy resist?
15:18Because the Oscars are an industry award,
15:20it's no surprise that films set within the entertainment business
15:23appeal to voters.
15:25Now, of course, musicals are the very definition of show business
15:28which, in turn, provides the perfect material for a song and dance film.
15:32The Artist, which triumphed in 2011,
15:34followed in the footsteps of Singing in the Rain
15:37by taking us back to the very beginning.
15:40Taking us back to the birth of sound.
15:43Using the techniques of silent cinema
15:45to create a drama in which the key language is music.
15:53Among the film's five Oscar wins, including Best Picture,
15:56was one for Ludovic Bors's Score.
16:00Sometimes the dancing in cinema isn't done by the actors,
16:03but by the camera.
16:06You OK, man?
16:08Take Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman,
16:11the Best Picture winner in 2015.
16:14Do you know where to go?
16:20Yeah. I know where to go.
16:23Here, Michael Keaton plays Regan Thompson,
16:26a washed-up actor struggling to reinvent his career
16:29years after his prime playing a superhero in the 1990s.
16:33Sound familiar?
16:35Although there are no song and dance numbers in Birdman,
16:38the camera is choreographed with a dexterity
16:41that would put a spring in Gene Kelly's step.
16:44The film uses digital technology to create what looks like
16:47a seamless and often spectacular single shot,
16:50twirling around the set from scene to scene
16:53with the grace of a ballerina.
16:56Ladies and gentlemen, I owe my entire success
17:01to beef, iron and wine.
17:04At the heart of so many of these showbiz pictures
17:07is the fickle nature of fame
17:09and the sense that, almost like a law of physics,
17:12for new stars to rise, others have to fall.
17:15In 1932, a film about movies, What Price Hollywood,
17:19scored a nomination for Adlai Rogers' St John's and Jane Murphy
17:23in the category of Best Writing Original Story.
17:26It didn't win, but that story was fairly quickly recycled
17:30in a more elaborate form
17:32and went on to be remade three times over the next eight decades.
17:36And now we arrive at the climax of the annual dinner
17:39of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
17:42It's been a magnet for nominations in every one of its incarnations.
17:46We have already applauded with our hearts as well as our hands
17:49Miss Vicki Lester.
17:51Ladies and gentlemen, when something like this happens to you
17:56and you try to tell how you feel about it,
17:59you find that out of all the words in the world,
18:02just two stick in your mind.
18:08And all I can do is to say them to you from my heart and...
18:18Hey, let go of my goddamn arm, Johnny.
18:21Hey, let go of my arm.
18:23Christ, I'm sorry, baby, I can't find my place.
18:26They don't see no place for me down here.
18:28Interestingly, the first incarnation of A Star Is Born
18:31was not a musical.
18:33It was set in the world of acting and didn't feature songs.
18:36Those arrived in the second version, directed by George Cukor
18:40and starring Judy Garland and James Mason,
18:43which took this behind-the-scenes tale and added the musical element.
18:47A theme that was picked up in the 1976 Barbara Streisand version
18:51in which the heroine changed from being an actor to a singer.
18:54Evergreen duly won the Oscar for Best Song.
19:02The latest incarnation, directed by Bradley Cooper,
19:05who stars alongside pop icon Lady Gaga,
19:08also stays in this musical world
19:10and, once again, it's attracted a clutch of Oscar nominations.
19:14Tell me something, girl
19:18Are you happy in this modern world?
19:23Or do you need more?
19:27What's significant is that a story that began life as an expose
19:31of the truth about Hollywood
19:33turned almost organically from a drama into a musical,
19:36as if any film about Hollywood would eventually break into song.
19:40Gonna give America the English Derby Cup.
19:44Gonna give America the English Derby Cup.
19:48I'm a Yankee Doodle dandy
19:51Yankee Doodle do or die.
19:54It's no coincidence that the Best Actor and Best Actress awards
19:57have often gone to stars playing other stars,
20:00whether real or fictional.
20:02Such roles provide the opportunity to do a song and dance onstage
20:06and demonstrate heartache and tragedy offstage.
20:09Using his own hoofing and warbling skills,
20:13as real-life song-and-dance man George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy,
20:18while Barbara Streisand shared the only ever Joint Best Actress Award
20:23as vaudeville legend Fanny Bryce in Funny Girl.
20:26Don't tell me not to live, just sit and putter
20:29Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter
20:32Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade
20:37What'd you get me a guitar for?
20:39Cos I like the way you sing.
20:41Well, I was born a coal miner's daughter
20:47Sissy Spacek and Reese Witherspoon both triumphed playing country stars,
20:51respectively Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter
20:54and June Carter in Walk the Line.
20:57I dropped a nickel in a jukebox just to hear it play
21:01And 2019 has seen Rami Malek nominated for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury,
21:06with Bohemian Rhapsody in contention for five Oscars, including Best Picture.
21:11Mama, just killed a man
21:17But you don't always have to play a big name to win big.
21:21Sometimes small can be beautiful.
21:28Let's call this genre Ordinary People,
21:31in homage to Robert Redford's debut film as a director,
21:34which won a handful of Oscars in 1981, including Best Picture and Best Director.
21:40It's a weighty examination of how a family reacts to the death of one son
21:45and the attempted suicide of another,
21:47the film that American critic Roger Ebert astutely praised
21:50for sidestepping the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become.
21:57It's cold out here.
22:00You should put that on. Do you want a sweater?
22:04Do I need one?
22:08Key to its success are some great performances, not least Mary Tyler Moore,
22:13one of the biggest TV stars of the 60s and 70s,
22:16known previously for playing lovable ditzy city girls,
22:19but here cast against type as an uptight middle-class mother frozen by grief.
22:26You know, that animal next door, that Pepper or Pippin, whatever his name is...
22:31Pippin, Pippin, Pippin.
22:32He's not a very friendly dog. I don't care what Mr. McGreery says.
22:36What he really wanted was the retriever that was down the street for sale.
22:39And every time that dog comes into this backyard and I try to get him out...
22:42Bark! Bark! Bark!
22:47In some respects, Ordinary People fits neatly into that group of films
22:52in which the Academy, whose membership is disproportionately weighted toward actors,
22:56rewards an actor for their debut stint behind the camera,
23:00because, as we all know, what all actors really want to do is direct.
23:05Think of Kevin Costner's triumph directing dances with wolves...
23:09But they'll never take our freedom!
23:12..or Mel Gibson winning big with Braveheart.
23:16I came here to take my son home...
23:23..and I realise he already is home.
23:26Ordinary People followed another dysfunctional family saga,
23:29Kramer Vs Kramer, which had scooped Best Picture the previous year.
23:33Social dramas have often been rewarded in the acting categories,
23:37with Oscars going to performers like Halle Berry in Monsters Burn,
23:41or Monique in Precious, both of which deal with tough issues
23:45in a gritty, realistic manner.
23:48But to win Best Picture often takes something a little lighter.
23:53If you'd ask me real nice, I might put that bag up there for you.
23:58In 1935, Frank Capra's It Happened One Night
24:01became the first movie to sweep the board at the Oscars,
24:05winning Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director.
24:09The film's success was a surprise.
24:11Claudette Colbert was so convinced she wasn't going to win
24:14that she was heading off on a cross-country rail trip
24:16on the night of the ceremony.
24:18Studio boss Harry Cohn had to send someone to drag her off the train
24:21when it turned out she'd won.
24:23Cleverly, It Happened One Night deftly combined sharp social commentary
24:27with crowd-pleasing screwball comedy.
24:30In much the same way that Capra's It's A Wonderful Life
24:33mixed film and television,
24:36Gable plays a working-class reporter
24:38and Colbert a spoiled socialite.
24:40When they're thrown together on a bus journey,
24:42their two worlds collide and sparks fly.
24:46Are you ungrateful, Brad?
24:49I'm not ungrateful.
24:51I'm not ungrateful.
24:53I'm not ungrateful.
24:55I'm not ungrateful.
24:57I'm not ungrateful.
24:59I'm not ungrateful.
25:01I'm not ungrateful.
25:03I'm not ungrateful, Brad.
25:05All aboard!
25:08It may have become a rom-com classic,
25:10but It Happened One Night was made at the height of the Depression
25:13and the anxieties of the time are clearly on show
25:16in the hardship of the people in trailer parks and bus depots.
25:20You know, there's something about your manner.
25:24It's like you're trying to toy with me.
25:29That's right, Aurora. I'm playing with you.
25:32This is the element. This is exactly...
25:34Do you want to play, Aurora?
25:3650 years later, we find a similar interplay
25:38between comedy and drama
25:40in the 1984 Best Picture winner Terms of Endearment.
25:43Here, the uptight heroine, played by Shirley MacLaine,
25:46and the cheeky, straight-talking ex-astronaut,
25:48played by Jack Nicholson,
25:50spar in a manner which echoes Gable and Colbert.
25:53The characters are older,
25:55but the banter is at times strikingly similar.
25:58Like its predecessor,
26:00Terms of Endearment won a clutch of big awards,
26:03including Best Picture and Director for James L Brooks,
26:06Actress for Shirley MacLaine and Supporting Actor for Nicholson.
26:10Fly me to the moon...
26:17Compare these bedroom scenes from the two films.
26:20It Happened One Night was a pre-Hayes Code comedy,
26:23meaning this was racy for the time.
26:26Perhaps you're interested in how a man undresses.
26:29Well, I was just sitting here, realizing...
26:33realizing that I had never shown you my Renoir.
26:36What are you talking about?
26:38First the right, then the left.
26:42After that, it's every man for himself.
26:47Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
26:50The big bad wolf, the big bad wolf
26:53She's afraid of the big bad wolf
26:56Tra-la-la-la-la
26:59Hi.
27:00Don't you realize I'm a grandmother?
27:07Would you mind, please, putting out the light?
27:10No, no, go on.
27:17I like the lights on.
27:19Then go home and turn them on.
27:22In 1960, the midway point between these two pictures,
27:25McLean appeared in Billy Wilder's brilliant comedy The Apartment,
27:29the classic Oscar-winning tale of ordinary people.
27:32In one way, it's an embittered look
27:34at the cruel, brutal exploitation of the corporate world,
27:37but it's also an irresistible romantic comedy
27:40that trumps an attempted suicide
27:42with a sweet, tough, tart, but essentially optimistic resolution.
27:49Cut.
27:52I love you, Miss Kubelik.
27:55Three. Queen.
27:58Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.
28:05Shut up and deal.
28:09Our own king of the socially conscious drama is, of course, Ken Loach,
28:13whose films have earned major awards recognition in Europe,
28:16but have never been seen as Oscar contenders.
28:19Loach's countryman Mike Lee has been Oscar-nominated seven times,
28:23but never won, even though his films are shot through with humour.
28:30Other British directors, however, have found that sweet spot
28:33between social realism and movie magic.
28:37John Schlesinger made Midnight Cowboy
28:39the first Best Picture winner to earn a US X rating.
28:43The final scenes depict a man dying of emphysema
28:47on a bus ride with a male prostitute,
28:49but the performances of Dustin Hoffman and John Voight
28:52and the combination of music and image
28:54make this a transcendent moment of cinema.
28:57And that sense of sweetness is heightened
28:59by John Barry's memorable harmonica theme,
29:02which I once had the privilege of playing with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
29:06and which never fails to melt an audience's heart.
29:1740 years later, Danny Boyle's Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire,
29:22loosely adapted from Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A,
29:25took the poverty-stricken plight of street kids in Mumbai
29:28and turned it into an uplifting human drama,
29:31coloured by the lively inflections of Bollywood movies.
29:34Hey.
29:52Hey.
29:56Hey!
29:58Hey!
30:00Hey!
30:02Give me your hand.
30:06Let your hand rest on my hand. Relax.
30:09I got you, I promise.
30:11I won't let you go.
30:13Hey, man, I got you.
30:15And most recently, Barry Jenkins' sublime Moonlight
30:19proved that an indie film with potentially niche appeal
30:22could win Best Picture when universalised by unexpectedly dazzling visuals
30:27and a superb use of music.
30:29No wonder it beat La La Land to the top prize.
30:35And speaking of outside contenders,
30:37there's one small but important group of Oscar winners
30:40that reveals key clues about the narrative tropes and character types
30:44that the Academy hold most dear.
30:52In March 1975,
30:54a little-known Italian-American actor called Sylvester Stallone
30:58watched a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner.
31:02Ali was heavyweight champion of the world,
31:04Wepner, a minor fighter with little hope of finishing the bout,
31:07the classic underdog.
31:09In the event, Wepner was only seconds short of going the full distance
31:13when he lost on a technical knockout.
31:15Stallone, himself a Hollywood outsider and underdog
31:18whose roles included the softcore romp The Party at Kitty & Studs,
31:22aka Italian Stallion,
31:24and the cult film The Lords of Flatbush,
31:27immediately started work on a script about a boxer,
31:30which he then sold on the condition that he starred in it.
31:34Against the odds, the studio agreed, provided the budget was kept low.
31:40The result was Rocky.
31:42In Stallone's story, the hero loses the fight
31:45but, crucially, is still standing at the end.
31:48A huge box office hit in 1976,
31:51Rocky picked up both Best Picture and Best Director the following year.
31:58It's chaos. Rocky, you went the distance.
32:00You went the 15 rounds. How do you feel?
32:02What are you thinking about when that buzzer sounds?
32:05What do you think about when the 15th round, you're coming out?
32:08You've got to get mad.
32:10You've got to say, I'm a human being.
32:12God damn it! My life has value!
32:15In doing so, it knocked out a couple of big hitters.
32:18Network, a razor-sharp media satire.
32:21I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!
32:25Forget it.
32:27We don't want you to do anything that would embarrass you,
32:30that you don't feel right about.
32:32Forget it.
32:34And the acclaimed Watergate drama, All The President's Men.
32:38Like so many sports movies, Rocky features a training montage,
32:42the transformative, stirring sequence that's a staple of the genre.
32:46MUSIC PLAYS
32:52It ends with one of cinema's most iconic shots,
32:55as our hero dances at the top of the steps
32:57to Philadelphia's Museum of Art.
32:59Ever since, they've been called the Rocky Steps.
33:02MUSIC CONTINUES
33:1128 years later, we find a very similar training sequence
33:15in Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's tale
33:18of underdog female pugilist Maggie Fitzgerald and Frankie Dunn,
33:22the grizzled trainer who helps give her a shot at glory.
33:25It's the only other boxing film to win Best Picture and Director,
33:29but unlike Rocky before her, Maggie isn't left standing.
33:33CROWD CHEERS
33:45A profoundly downbeat ending brought criticism from some groups,
33:49prompting Eastwood to say that the film was about the American dream,
33:53albeit expressed in the arc of a Greek tragedy.
33:58You remind me of my daddy.
34:03Well, he must have been a very intelligent, handsome man.
34:09Million Dollar Baby netted Hilary Swank a Best Actress Oscar,
34:13putting her in a tradition of Academy Award-winning movie boxers,
34:16which includes Wallace Beery for The Champ, way back in 1932,
34:21Marlon Brando for On The Waterfront,
34:24Christian Bale for The Fighter,
34:26and perhaps most famously, Robert De Niro for Raging Bull.
34:33And he wobbles into the ropes and goes down!
34:37One last bout, one last shot at redemption.
34:41The point is not about winning, but going the distance.
34:44Now, it should be noted that the plucky underdog theme
34:47isn't restricted to boxing pictures.
34:51The wonderfully funny and moving script by Steve Teshitch
34:54for the cycling movie Breaking Away was rewarded in the 1980 ceremony.
34:59The Cutters, a motley crew of working-class small-town boys,
35:02face the wealthy and privileged university team in a cycle race
35:06and succeed in triumphing against the odds.
35:10And of course, the most celebrated British sporting entry
35:14is 1981's Chariots Of Fire,
35:16the story of not one, but two underdogs
35:19who overcome prejudice and class snobbery to win Olympic gold.
35:24Chariots Of Fire has a blend of music and image imitated ever since.
35:28Vangelis' theme tune laid down the perfect track
35:31and Chariots ran away with four big awards.
35:35Simple Jack, the story of a mentally impaired farmhand
35:38who can talk to animals...
35:40Ben Stiller's Hollywood satire Tropic Thunder
35:43reinforces the most oft-repeated canard about the Oscars.
35:47In a weird way, I had to sort of just free myself up
35:50to believe that it was OK to be stupid or dumb.
35:53To be a moron.
35:54To be a moron.
35:55To be a moron.
35:56To be a moron.
35:57To be a moron.
35:58To be a moron.
35:59To be a moron.
36:00To be a moron.
36:01To be a moron.
36:02To be a moron.
36:03To be a moron.
36:04Yeah.
36:05To be moronical.
36:06Exactly. To be a moron.
36:07An imbecile.
36:08Yeah.
36:09Like the dumbest motherfucker that ever lived.
36:11It's the claim that the easiest way to win an acting award
36:14is to play someone facing and often overcoming
36:17a physical or mental challenge,
36:19be it illness, injury, addiction or disability.
36:23Now, look at the last 30 years alone
36:26and by my reckoning, well over a quarter of Best Actress awards
36:30and a third of Best Actor awards
36:32have gone to people playing characters
36:34who would broadly fit into this category.
36:38But the idea that these are somehow easy wins is nonsense.
36:41Far from it.
36:42In fact, they're often very demanding roles
36:45and they encompass a wide range of characters and performances.
36:49The role that seems to have embedded the theme of disability
36:52in the Academy's consciousness
36:54is Dustin Hoffman's autistic Raymond Babbitt in 1988's Rain Man.
37:01SCREAMING
37:08While Rain Man was praised in some quarters
37:10for raising public awareness of autism,
37:13it's a spectrum of which Raymond's form is highly unusual.
37:17He's an autistic savant and although he's withdrawn,
37:21some of his mental skills, including memory and counting,
37:25function at an almost superhuman level.
37:28You watching that?
37:29Yeah.
37:34You seeing that, Ray? You catching that?
37:36Yeah, falling on the ground.
37:40OK, now what...
37:42What do I have left?
37:44Two jacks, one eight, one king, one six.
37:47Two aces, one ten, one nine, one five.
37:50One five.
37:52You are beautiful, man.
37:55SCREAMING
37:59Rain Man won a handful of awards,
38:01including Best Actor and Best Picture in 1989,
38:05a feat repeated in 1995 by Forrest Gump.
38:09Congratulations. How do you feel?
38:12I got to pee.
38:14I believe he said he had to go pee.
38:16Tom Hanks' Forrest faces very different challenges to Raymond.
38:20He has a somewhat unspecified learning impairment,
38:23reflected in a low IQ.
38:27But Forrest also has exceptional athletic skills,
38:30which see him become a top American footballer...
38:33He must be the stupidest son of a bitch alive!
38:36But he sure is fast!
38:39..a world-class ping-pong player
38:42and a transcontinental runner.
38:44MUSIC CONTINUES
38:49This is a recurrent theme for the kind of roles that win Oscars,
38:53the portrayal of a character who has a disability
38:56but who is also blessed with a special gift.
38:59In 1990, the year after Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor for Rain Man,
39:04Daniel Day-Lewis triumphed
39:06with his own extraordinary transformative performance.
39:09My Left Foot is the story of Christy Brown.
39:12Born with cerebral palsy, he grows up in poverty in 1930s Ireland.
39:22Christy's life is the very definition of struggle,
39:25and in Day-Lewis's remarkably physical performance,
39:28you can see Christy's rage and frustration
39:31all but bursting out of his body.
39:34A turning point in his life comes when he demonstrates
39:37that he can write and draw with his left foot.
39:40Christy goes on to become a talented painter and an author,
39:43a story all the more inspiring because it's based on real events.
39:53As, of course, was 2014's The Theory Of Everything,
39:56featuring Eddie Redmayne's Oscar-winning portrayal
39:59of the late Professor Stephen Hawking.
40:05The Oscar-friendly elements are all in place.
40:08Real-life story, mental brilliance, physical disability.
40:12But playing Hawking presents its own unique challenges.
40:16While Daniel Day-Lewis portrays a man disabled from birth,
40:19Redmayne has to capture how Hawking's motor neurone disease develops
40:23after it's first diagnosed when he's studying at Cambridge.
40:27What about the brain?
40:31The brain isn't affected. Your thoughts won't change.
40:34It's just...
40:39Well, eventually, no-one will know what they are.
40:46I'm ever so sorry.
40:48There's a parallel strain of Oscar-winning films
40:51about real-life characters whose mental brilliance
40:54is accompanied by mental illness.
40:56Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind centres on Russell Crowe's
40:59mathematician John Nash, a man who developed paranoid schizophrenia
41:04Unusually, while the film itself won awards for Best Picture
41:07and Best Director in 2002, Crowe left the ceremony empty-handed,
41:12perhaps as a result of negative campaigning,
41:15which claimed that the real-life Nash was an anti-Semite
41:18and a vote for Crowe was somehow a vote for Nash.
41:22Well, on the bright side, you've invented window art.
41:27This is a group playing touch football.
41:31This is a cluster of pigeons fighting over breadcrumbs.
41:36And this here is a woman who's chasing a man who stole her purse.
41:41John, you watched mugging? That's weird.
41:44In competitive behaviour, someone always loses.
41:47However, the following year, Nicole Kidman won Best Actress by a nose
41:51for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours,
41:54suffering from bipolar disorder but still writing a masterpiece.
42:00This is my right.
42:02It is the right of every human being.
42:05I choose not the suffocating anaesthetic of the suburbs
42:08but the violent jolt of the capital.
42:11That is my choice.
42:14Meanwhile, Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Foxx combined piano virtuosity
42:19with schizoaffective disorder as David Health got in Shine...
42:25..and blindness as Ray Charles in Ray.
42:29Well, now, oh, Mary Ann
42:32You know you sure look fine
42:35Well, now, oh, oh
42:38You know you sure look fine
42:42While these kind of roles have long attracted Oscar attention,
42:46more recently it's been argued with some force
42:49that characters with disabilities should be played by actors
42:53who have similar disabilities.
42:55So, for example, if a character uses a wheelchair,
42:58who better to play them than an actor who uses a wheelchair?
43:03After all, in a world in which talented actors with disabilities
43:06are necessarily restricted in their role choices,
43:09why should roles for which they are uniquely qualified
43:12be taken away from them?
43:14If Coming Home were remade today,
43:16would John Voight be the first choice for the sexy wheelchair-using
43:20Vietnam veteran who gets the girl?
43:23Don't wake him up.
43:25Hey, Doc.
43:27In 1987, Marlee Matlin, who is deaf,
43:30made Oscar history by winning Best Actress for her role
43:34as a deaf character in Children Of A Lesser God,
43:37a remarkable victory which seemed to offer real hope for change.
43:42But this year, the Academy notably failed to nominate
43:45rising star Millicent Simmons, who is deaf,
43:47for her standout role in A Quiet Place,
43:50despite several nominations elsewhere.
43:54When it comes to the Oscars, change happens very slowly.
44:06I meet you today...
44:08In 2010, Colin Firth combined disability with royalty
44:11as the stammering George VI in The King's Speech.
44:15In circumstances which are...
44:20...
44:25Great Men And Women Of History is another solid acting awards bet,
44:29and it's a category where the Brits in particular
44:32have delivered some majestic performances.
44:36Good morning. I'm so sorry to disturb you.
44:38I'm just expecting a phone call to be put through here.
44:41Out!
44:43Oh, there it is.
44:46Thank you, sir.
44:50Helen Mirren's Oscar in 2007 placed her in a line
44:54of Academy Award-winning British kings and queens
44:57that includes Charles Lawton's Henry VIII
45:00and Judi Dench's Elizabeth I.
45:04And in 2019, Olivia Colman is hotly tipped for a memorable performance
45:09as one of Britain's least memorable monarchs, Queen Anne in The Favourite.
45:15Make them stop.
45:17What? Stop!
45:20Enough! Stop!
45:23Be gone! I command it!
45:26Leave!
45:29But what about some of our other national treasures?
45:34In 2018, the Best Actor Award went to a British star
45:38playing a British Prime Minister, Gary Oldman, as Churchill.
45:42How many more dictators must be wooed, appeased?
45:48Good God, give it a mixed privilege.
45:50Before we learn, you cannot reason with a tiger
45:55when your head is in its mouth!
45:58It's the kind of serious, showy role for a serious, showy thespian
46:03who knows how to deliver a serious, showy speech.
46:07I am the President of the United States of America,
46:12clothed in immense power!
46:15The Brits also have a nice sideline playing American leaders.
46:19Daniel Day-Lewis won an unprecedented third Best Actor Award in 2013
46:24for his Abraham Lincoln.
46:27Anthony Hopkins' Nixon was nominated back in 1996.
46:32I promised the American people peace with honour in South East Asia.
46:38Now, that may take time.
46:40And in 2019, Christian Bale is a nominee for his portrayal
46:44of Vice President Dick Cheney,
46:46a man just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.
46:49Now, maybe I can handle some of the more mundane jobs,
46:54overseeing bureaucracy,
46:57overseeing bureaucracy,
47:00managing military, energy, foreign policy.
47:11That sounds good.
47:13One of the challenges of making a historical film
47:16is to create suspense and drama,
47:18despite the fact that the audience knows how the story will end.
47:21Churchill may be Prime Minister,
47:23but he also has to be a sympathetic underdog.
47:26Darkest Hour emphasises his political weakness
47:29as Hitler advances in Europe.
47:32I need not impress upon you
47:35the trouble faced by the Western Hemisphere
47:41without your support in some fashion.
47:45I know, I know.
47:47You are on my mind day and night.
47:50It's interesting to compare Darkest Hour
47:52to the story of another Prime Minister,
47:55directed by Phyllida Lloyd,
47:56which secured Meryl Streep her third Oscar in 2012.
48:00You've got it in you to go the whole distance.
48:03Absolutely.
48:04What?
48:06Prime Minister?
48:09Oh, no.
48:11Oh, no.
48:13Oh, no.
48:14In Britain, there will be no female Prime Minister.
48:19Yeah, not in my lifetime.
48:21No.
48:22While the film isn't afraid to present Margaret Thatcher
48:25as a flawed figure,
48:26it still requires us to invest in her as a character.
48:29So she's depicted as bravely taking on
48:32the male public school establishment
48:34in the course of her rise to power.
48:38Underdog figures are often at the heart
48:40of the grand historical epics
48:42that sometimes sweep the board at the Academy Awards.
48:45Gandhi and Braveheart's William Wallace
48:48may have ever-so-slightly different views
48:50about the use of violence,
48:52but they're both fighting to secure justice for their people.
48:55You can see underdogs in fictional epics too.
48:58Maximus in Gladiator is a former Roman general
49:01reduced to fighting in the arena.
49:04Father to a murdered son,
49:06husband to a murdered wife,
49:09and I will have my vengeance in this life or the next.
49:15But Oscar also has a fondness for the little guy,
49:18fighting a small battle that embodies
49:20a more eternal conflict between freedom and repression.
49:23In 1976, the big winner was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
49:27in which Jack Nicholson's psychiatric patient,
49:30Randall McMurphy,
49:31comes to represent an everyman
49:33struggling against the system,
49:35personified by Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched.
49:38Chief, he's got his hand up. Look!
49:40No, Mr McMurphy.
49:41When the meeting was adjourned, the vote was nine to nine.
49:45Oh, come on, you're not going to say that now.
49:47You're not going to say that now.
49:49You're going to pull that henhouse shit now
49:51when the vote the Chief just voted, it was ten to nine.
49:54I want that television set turned on right now!
49:57These struggles can be against forms of oppression and evil
50:00so vast that it's impossible for a single film to capture them.
50:04Some other Oscar Best Picture winners, like Schindler's List,
50:07have been criticised, wrongly in my opinion,
50:10for focusing on stories of survival
50:12rather than on the millions more who died or were murdered.
50:20I could have got more out of it.
50:25I could have got more.
50:27I don't know. Maybe if I just...
50:30You luxuriate in his favour.
50:32I survive!
50:34I will not fall into despair.
50:36I will offer up my talents to Master Ford.
50:38I will keep myself hardy till freedom is up.
50:42When it comes to the great historical injustices,
50:45it's perhaps hard to imagine that anyone in the audience
50:48really needs to be told how terrible they are.
50:51As Amy Poehler joked from the Golden Globe stage in 2014,
50:55I loved 12 Years A Slave,
50:57and I can honestly say that after seeing that film,
50:59I will never look at slavery the same way again.
51:02In fact, director Steve McQueen does a brilliant job
51:05of finding a new way to tell an old story
51:08to avoid stating the obvious.
51:10He resists the temptation to burden his film
51:13and Chiwetel Ejiofor's Solomon Northrop
51:16with repeated outbursts about injustice and hope.
51:19Sometimes the realities of our hero's struggle are told through music.
51:26Like this.
51:27A striking counterpoint is established
51:30between Paul Dano's weasely, taunting rendition
51:33of a song heard in the plantations...
51:36..and the slave's defiant graveside rendition of Roll Jordan Roll...
51:45..the latter becoming an epiphanic moment
51:48that pierces to the very heart of Northrop's predicament.
51:53Hey, Robbie, everything OK?
51:55I need you to tell me something, Jim.
51:57Could it be 90, please?
51:59What? Could it be as high as 90?
52:02A recent Oscar winner about another horrific injustice
52:05avoids showing the crime altogether.
52:08Spotlight, which won Best Picture in 2016,
52:11is the only film in the world to have won the Oscar
52:14for Best Picture in 2016.
52:16It's the only film in the world to have won the Oscar
52:19for Best Picture in 2016.
52:21It concerns the widespread sexual abuse of children
52:24by Catholic clergy in Massachusetts.
52:26Rather than depicting the abuse, Spotlight concentrates instead
52:30on the painstaking work of investigative reporters
52:33from the Boston Globe to bring the scandal to light.
52:39We need to focus on the institution, not the individual priests.
52:43Practice and policy.
52:45Show me the church manipulated the system
52:47so these guys wouldn't have to face charges.
52:49Show me they put those same priests back into parishes
52:52time and time again.
52:53Show me this was systemic, that it came from the top down.
52:58Spotlight also examines how a wider community
53:01may become complicit in an unspoken crime.
53:09This is how it happens, isn't it, Pete?
53:11What's that?
53:12A guy leans on a guy and suddenly the whole town
53:15just looks the other way.
53:18The irony, of course, is that Spotlight won Best Picture in 2016
53:22just a year before the Me Too movement accused Hollywood itself
53:26of turning a blind eye to persistent sexual abuse
53:29within the movie industry.
53:31When the Academy awarded Frances McDormand Best Actress in 2018
53:35for her portrayal of a furious, grief-stricken mother
53:38in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,
53:40it seemed to reflect the mood of the moment.
53:44Hey, fuckhead!
53:46What?
53:47Don't say what, Dixon, when she comes in calling you a fuckhead!
53:50And don't you come in here... Shut up!
53:52Mildred Hayes, whose teenage daughter was raped and murdered,
53:56blames the police for failing to solve the crime
53:59and incurs the wrath of her local community.
54:02In her uniform of a boiler suit,
54:04Mildred is quite literally a blue-collar warrior.
54:08I don't think those billboards is very fair.
54:11The time it took you to get out here whining like a bitch, Willoughby,
54:14some other poor girl's probably out there being butchered right now,
54:17but I'm glad you got your priorities straight, I'll say that for you.
54:20She has predecessors in other working-class female characters
54:23seeking justice.
54:25Julia Roberts won Best Actress for playing campaigner Erin Brockovich.
54:29Second of all, these people don't dream about being rich.
54:32They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool
54:35without worrying that they'll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of 20.
54:39As did Jodie Foster for portraying rape survivor Sarah Tobias
54:43in The Accused.
54:45That's the best you can do, and your best sucks.
54:48Now, I don't know what you got for selling me out,
54:51but I sure as shit hope it's worth it.
54:54But writer-director Martin McDonagh raises the possibility
54:57that Mildred's rage predates the tragedy
55:00and that anger was already tearing her family apart.
55:03So how come a week before she died,
55:06she comes around asking if she can move in with me at my place?
55:09Because she couldn't stand the two of you bitching at each other no more,
55:12fighting with each other.
55:14I said, no, stay at home, your mom loves you.
55:17Fuck them.
55:27There's an uncomfortable ambiguity at the heart of Three Billboards,
55:31which is maybe why the Academy found it easier to celebrate the performances
55:35than the film as a whole.
55:37When it comes to the Best Picture award,
55:40Oscar still prefers the moral clarity of films like Twelve Years A Slave
55:44and Spotlight.
55:59The rest of us go inside the tunnel.
56:04In 2004, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King
56:08gained access to an elite club,
56:10the third and most recent film to win 11 Academy Awards.
56:15No picture has ever topped this number,
56:17which was first achieved by William Wyler's Ben-Hur in 1960
56:21and then by James Cameron's Titanic in 1998.
56:25So does this elevate them to an exclusive tier of artistic excellence?
56:30Well, it's worth noting that they're all a certain kind of film,
56:34spectacular epics.
56:36I nearly said historical epics,
56:38but of course, Lord of the Rings isn't historical
56:41unless you're somehow watching this in Middle Earth.
56:44All three won awards for Best Picture and Best Director,
56:47but only Ben-Hur took home any acting awards.
56:51And it's interesting to note that all three are classic underdog stories
56:55with slaves, penniless artists and hobbits at their respective hearts.
57:00And if there's one big lesson
57:02when you look back at the history of the Academy Awards,
57:05it's that Oscar loves an underdog.
57:08Just look at this year's nominees.
57:10A Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody are classic all-singing,
57:14all-dancing tales of outsiders, making it big in showbiz.
57:20Roma is an ordinary people tale
57:22featuring an extraordinary performance from screen-first-timer Jalitza Aparicio
57:26as a struggling housemaid in 1970s Mexico.
57:31Black Klansman and Green Book
57:33explore racial prejudice in America in the 60s and 70s.
57:37You know what I'm trying to say.
57:39Chief, some of us can speak King's English, others speak Jive.
57:42Ron Stallworth here happens to be fluent in both.
57:46Ryan Coogler's Black Panther also has strong social justice themes.
57:51It may be a superhero fantasy,
57:53but everything from the design to the narrative to the soundtrack
57:57has an empowering anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-sexist edge.
58:03There's even an underdog element to drive the drama forward.
58:11Whether or not you think it's the best film of the year,
58:14Black Panther is certainly one of the most groundbreaking.
58:17A bona fide blockbuster made by an African-American director
58:21with a largely black cast.
58:23I also think, most importantly, that it's just a bloody good film.
58:27Exciting, adventurous and unexpected.
58:30No wonder it's been a hit with audiences and critics alike.
58:34As for Oscar, we'll have to wait and see.