Cinema
The awards
Peter Ackroyd
And once again it is that special time of year when the Spectator's film critic, ably assisted by the back-numbers depart- ment, tries to remember anything he may have seen in the past 12 months. In no particular order, this year's awards are: The Most Over-Rated Film of the Year: Almost any English film might find an appropriate home in this category: Laugh- terhouse, Another Country, The Dresser, 1984 were all greeted with squeals of delight, and the chorus of praise was generally accompanied by a coda to the effect that the British film industry is now flourishing, that it needs more government money, etcetera. But once again the major award in this section must go to Woody Allen and his Broadway Danny Rose, as unfunny a film as anyone would care to see.
Best Actor of the Year: Gerard Depardieu and Robert de Niro always have a chance of collecting this particular award, and both of them gave sterling performances this year, but the film critic swung wildly towards women: Vanessa Redgrave, in The Bostonians, was excellently nerve- racked and Maggie Smith, in A Private Function, was a suburban dream of im- periousness.
Best Script of the Year: Do we give an award to Proust for Schlondorffs Swann in Love? We tried, but he was spinning so rapidly in his grave that he could not grasp it. And so instead it was handed to Alan Bennett for A Private Function and his bestiary of northern clichés.
Aren't You Sick To Death Of? Films made out of the novels of Stephen King: The Dead Zone, Fire Starter, and many others in this year alone. Another award in this category goes to melancholy or 'lyrical' French films of which Bernard Tavernier's Month in the Country was a prize example. But the major prize goes to yet another
'I'm sorry I was rude to you, I thought you were my boss.' American film starring celebrities dis- guised as 'ordinary people': Terms of Endearment carried the slogan, 'Come to Laugh, Come to Cry, Come to Terms' but we only came to bury. It was a film which gave 'compassion' a very bad name.
Best Foreign Language Film: The award here went without argument to Satyajit Ray's The Home and the World.
Funniest Film of the Year: Ghostbusters had its moments, but they were difficult to recall; the award goes to Gene Wilder and his The Woman in Red for a dazzling display of hysteria.
Best Singing in a Major Motion Picture: Fortunately there were no lavish filmic productions of opera this year and so there were some who argued for Barbra Strei- sand in Yentl. But their suggestions were over-ruled, and the award was given to Carlos Saura's Carmen (which, to be fair, included some wonderful dancing also).
Most Peculiar Film of the Year: There were many nominations for this category: Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, which seemed to take place entirely in an echo chamber, was a strong contender but the award finally went to a Dutch film, now entirely forgot- ten, called The Fourth Man. It concerned a homosexual novelist, Roman Catholic fren- zy, witchcraft and some erotic scenes in a cemetery; it was actually rather good.
Ideas Which Have Been Tried Too Often And Should Now Be Forgotten: It might once have seemed interesting, and even modern, to make films in black-and-white when colour was available. But now every second film seems to use the same trick, and it is becoming tiresome. The worst offenders are the Americans, who apparently think that they are going back to their 'heritage'.
Worst Film of the Year: The entries were numberless: Greystoke, a monumental folly of a film which managed to ruin Tarzan's already dubious reputation; Jean-Jacques Beineix's The Moon in the Gutter, of which the experience of watching was rather like being trapped overnight in an advertising agency; but eventually the award had to go to Fellini's And the Ship Sails On, a film which sank even before it left harbour.
Best Revival of the Year: Undoubtedly the Hitchcock season, which must now qualify as the longest revival also, since it started in 1983.
Best Film of the Year: There were those who voted for Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves in this category, and it was an excellent film which suggested the style and direction in which the English cinema might profitably move (the 'general word for this style is 'magic realism', which means very little, but which does at least evoke the quality of heightened and fantastic realism that is so successfully employed here). But for sheer effectiveness and splendour, the palm was awarded to Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, a film which should on no account be missed.
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