The Oscars: And the nominees aren't...

'Giant' and not 'The Searchers'? 'Hamlet' and not 'Red River'? Charlton Heston and not Tony Curtis? As we find out who's up for this year's Oscars, David Thomson argues that the Academy often gets it wrong

Lest anyone believe that tablets of stone and righteousness are going to be handed down to us this afternoon in Los Angeles (I am referring to the nominations for this year's Oscars), let's play a time-honoured game. Let's give five nominations in the major categories for films, directors, actors and actresses whose reputations have endured but who were not even nominated in their day. And remember, these are just the five that spring to my mind; anyone knowing a little film history will have alternatives. Let me stress this: these films are being nominated now for the first time.

BEST PICTURE

'Rear Window'

That would have been in 1954, the year in which On the Waterfront won. For myself, I find the Kazan-Brando picture increasingly dated, whereas Rear Window gets better and better as a moment-by-moment thriller full of personal character studies and deeply concerned with responsibility in a voyeur society. (It's Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart, but you know that - it's rented all the time.)

'Red River'

One of the great westerns, from 1948, the year Laurence Olivier's Hamlet won. That was a very classy job but don't doubt which one people are still watching. Another nominee in 1948 was Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (deserved) and by then America was seeing "red" too much.

'The Night of the Hunter'

Not only was it not nominated in 1955, Charles Laughton's directorial debut was slaughtered by most critics and abandoned by the public. A dreary thing called Marty with Ernest Borgnine won and the other nominees were Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, Picnic, The Rose Tattoo and John Ford's Mister Roberts.

'Laura'

Overlooked in 1944, this is the Otto Preminger mystery with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews and that great music (also ignored). The Oscar went to a sentimental monstrosity, Going My Way, with Bing Crosby as a priest. It was 1944, and people were worried, but the Academy also ignored Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not and Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis.

'A History of Violence'

I'm guessing, but I suspect that David Cronenberg's truly brilliant and beautiful film will give way this year to more politically correct subject matter.

BEST DIRECTOR

'The Devil Is a Woman'

Josef von Sternberg's most sardonic treatment of love, and his last film with Marlene Dietrich. In 1935, its acid tone was not to the Academy's taste, and they thought good riddance to Miss Dietrich, so the Oscar went to John Ford's creepily bad The Informer.

'The Shop Around the Corner'

One of the most exquisite, mature comedies ever made in Hollywood, with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. In 1940, Ernst Lubitsch (he never won the directing Oscar) was passed over and the prize went to John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath - not a bad film, but sad proof that in hard times the Academy prefers gravitas to comedy.

'The Searchers'

Lest I seem to be grinding an axe on John Ford's grizzled neck, let me note that when he did make his great film - in 1956, with John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter and Natalie Wood - the Academy took a snooze and gave its Oscar to George Stevens for James Dean's final film, Giant. It's a safe bet that the Academy will miss the film that is really addressing American issues.

'Point Blank'

You can say that 1967 was a pretty good year, with Mike Nichols' The Graduate, Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, but the neglect of Point Blank can only have come from the fact that the director, John Boorman, was English and visiting. But visitors see a lot sometimes.

'The Right Stuff'

In 1983, Philip Kaufman's remarkable, ironic view of the space programme did get a nomination for Best Picture, but not a nod for Kaufman's direction, which again mixed drama and adventure with comedy and ridicule in a way that American authority still finds tough to take. James L Brooks won for Terms of Endearment, a film that I suspect now gathers dust and oblivion on the shelf.

BEST ACTOR

Cary Grant

Grant never won the Oscar for acting, so it comes as no shock to learn that he was not even nominated for His Girl Friday in 1940. That's the one where he's the ruthless newspaper editor and Rosalind Russell is his star reporter and ex-wife who is about to get married to another man. If Oscars are won for complete mastery of multiple moods while holding the screen in the fastest dialogue ever filmed, then this should have been nominated. The winner was James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story (Grant got snubbed for that film, too!).

Al Pacino

Not nominated for The Godfather in 1972 (not as Best Actor, just Supporting Actor) - the Oscar went to Brando in the same film. Yet isn't it transparently clear that the picture is about Michael - he has the leading role, while Brando has some great supporting scenes?

James Cagney

Not recognised in the nomination process for 1949 for his magnificent, terrifying Cody Jarrett in Raoul Walsh's White Heat. Remember the scene where he hears of his mother's death and goes berserk? White Heat was judged a trashy gangster film and Hollywood tried to persuade itself that it did literature, social protest, humane concern and patriotism better than trash - so the winner was Broderick Crawford in All the King's Men and the other nominees were Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High, Richard Todd in The Hasty Heart, Kirk Douglas in Champion, and John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima.

Tony Curtis

In Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot from 1959 - quite simply because Tony was altogether the sexier of the two babes in that film, as well as the engine to its comedy. Jack Lemmon got nominated (fair enough, but it's a showy, grating bit of work), and the Oscar went to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur, who apparently didn't get the gay subtext that Gore Vidal had slipped into the script. So altogether the year presents a nice, caustic panorama of gay awareness.

Robert Mitchum

It follows from earlier remarks that Robert Mitchum should have been nominated for his mad killer preacher Harry Powell in Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter. If the Academy often responds to people going outside their normal range, what happened here? Well, the Oscar for acting in 1955 went to Ernest Borgnine in Marty, and the other nominees were James Cagney in Love Me or Leave Me, James Dean in East of Eden, Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm and Spencer Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock.

BEST ACTRESS

Ida Lupino

In 1944, destiny, piety and David O Selznick's boosting got the Oscar for Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette - unviewable today, even in conditions of high fever and moral dread. And not even a nomination went to Ida Lupino in The Hard Way, a minor masterpiece directed by Vincent Sherman about sisters in showbusiness. Lupino is the kind of actress who made so little fuss about being very good that she was regularly overlooked.

Carole Lombard

Equally, it can only be the strenuous demands of the war effort that got the Oscar to Greer Garson in Mrs Miniver in 1942. That film and its lady are now insufferably prim. And yet, the far more daring (and comic) attitude to the war in Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be meant that Carole Lombard was not even nominated. But, of course, she was never nominated for Twentieth Century either.

Angie Dickinson

For her Feathers in Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo in 1959. Few directors did more for actresses than Hawks, yet steadily the Academy looked the other way. In the western format, Angie plays a magnificent, comic neurotic to the hilt - sexy but mocking her own sexiness, smart but a mess. Superb work.

Lee Remick and Marilyn Monroe

The same year as Angie Dickinson, Lee Remick was overlooked for Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder and Marilyn Monroe was nowhere for Wilder's Some Like It Hot. But the award went to Simone Signoret in Room at the Top and other nominees included Audrey Heburn in Fred Zinnemann's The Nun's Story and Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor in Joseph L Mankiewicz's grotesque Suddenly, Last Summer. Moral of the year (and other years): women should suffer, die, go mad or be holy if they want awards. Just don't be smart, funny and attractive.

To conclude, there are so many deserving omissions that this list could have gone on and on, and that's the thing to remember tomorrow as the nominations emerge. Always bear in mind that there may be great work in any year in films you haven't seen - because the heavy advertising hasn't boosted them for nominations. More or less, the awards and the nominating process play an old Hollywood game: they follow the money.