The 800-lb. Golden Gorilla

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If one actor could encapsulate the limitations of the Oscar mind-set, it would be Stanwyck, who in the early '30s all but created the movies' image of the tough broad, surviving and thriving in the Depression through a wily, earthy cynicism. Stanwyck was sensational in grimy melodramas, from Illicit and Night Nurse to the immoral, immortal Baby Face. But she didn't get an Oscar nomination until 1938, when she broke from her normal screen character to play the nobly sacrificing mother in Stella Dallas. Seven years later, when she was a finalist as the rotten femme fatale of Double Indemnity, she lost to Ingrid Bergman, whose husband is trying to kill her in Gaslight. Oscar chose the wanly victimized wife over the fabulously victimizing one.

Time and again, given the choice between an actor who does great work as a meanie and another who does good work as a cutie or victim, Oscar went for the latter. Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the major revolutionary performances in movies; it announced the arrival of the Method actor and the sexy brute in one galvanizing package. Yet Brando lost to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. The Academy went for old style over new, as it did in withholding Oscars from Brando's more sensitive brethren, Montgomery Clift and James Dean. Both were multiple nominees; neither won. And like Heath Ledger--who in Brokeback Mountain gave a bold, pioneering performance--neither Clift nor Dean lived long enough to be given an honorary award.

At least Clift, Dean and Ledger had the luck to be making serious dramas from Oscar-winning directors. Anyone who worked in other kinds of movies ran into the wall of the Academy's genre snobbery. Crime movies (later known as film noir) had a dark glory, a stinging postwar fatalism, but flew under the Academy's radar and beneath its contempt. Of the hundreds of westerns in the '50s, some were superb, like Ford's The Searchers and Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, but even those A-list directors could not interest Oscar in their oaters--zero nominations for those two great films-- or in John Wayne's towering performances in them.

The members usually dismissed science fiction and horror as candidates for Best Picture--from the 1933 King Kong (just a trick movie) to Psycho (just an exercise in sadism from a director, Alfred Hitchcock, who should know better) to 2001 (what was that about?). Jaws and Star Wars did get Best Picture nominations but didn't take the top prize. See, these weren't people movies; they were simply the sum of their monster or sci-fi special effects.

The '70s brought a new breed of director, steeped in movie lore and movie love, making smart films that were huge hits--and for the longest time, Oscar ignored them too. The Godfather won Best Picture, but its auteur, Francis Ford Coppola, was not named Best Director. (He won for The Godfather Part II.) Nor did the Academy give Spielberg an Oscar for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark or E.T. (He had to wait till 1994, when Schindler's List took Best Picture and Best Director.) Martin Scorsese, by general acclamation the most intense and gifted director of this talented bunch, wasn't even nominated for Taxi Driver, then suffered a generation of indignity as his work on Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York and The Aviator lost out to that of other, lesser directors. (He finally copped the Oscar last year, at 64, for The Departed.) And yet they all have the edge on Hitchcock and Hawks, who never won a competitive Oscar.

Now the kids with beards--as Billy Wilder called them--are graybeards, and a younger generation is getting its turn. Paul Thomas Anderson, writer-director of the critics' darling There Will Be Blood, is 37. Jason Reitman, whose Juno is the only $100 million box-office hit of the five Best Picture finalists, is just 30. That leaves those two sassy outsiders--Joel Coen, 53, and his brother Ethan, 50--in the mainstream, though their entry, No Country for Old Men, carries the double-whammy genre curse of being a kind of western-horror movie. Can it beat out Anderson's parched epic or Reitman's new-family-values comedy? Its other competition: Michael Clayton, with George Clooney agonizing handsomely in a story about nasty business ethics (a favorite Academy theme, so the movie has a chance of winning), and Atonement, which fits the old tradition of quality, as a period romance in which beautiful people get horribly victimized.

All five films have their charms, or their poignancy, or their political message, or their steely fury--elements Oscar has often rewarded. None would shame the Academy by winning. No Country for Old Men has earned a ton of early awards, so it must be considered the favorite. It's marvelously assured, wonderfully gripping and acted to the hilt. It would be among the worthiest winners of the Best Picture award in the 80 years of Oscar.

It's just no Citizen Kane.

WHAT ABOUT THIS YEAR?

These are not predictions, because critics hardly ever win Oscar pools, but here's who should take home the statues--and why

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine.]

Should Win Shouldn't Win No Country for Old Men A finely twisted horror-crime-western film that moves beyond genre There Will Be Blood Geysers of hype fuel this oilman epic. But psychologically, it's a big, dry well Johnny Depp Sweeney Todd He's fierce, wondrous, haunted, funny, scary--and on key Daniel Day-Lewis There Will Be Blood A superb actor in an opaque role--it's all snarl, no soul Julie Christie Away from Her She radiates the vague cunning of dementia, its creeping oblivion Marion Cotillard La Vie en Rose Her Edith Piaf has the big gestures but lacks the sad internal music