Why the Oscars Need 10 Nominees

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that it would be expanding the number of films in its Best Picture category from five to 10. In immediate response, a Hollywood spokesperson said the movie industry had promised to make twice as many good pictures.

Not really. The doubling of finalists for the most prized Oscar will have no impact on the quality of films. But it should allow a wider variety of movies in a category that has, over the past decade or so, been hijacked by “worthy,” mostly unpopular films that don’t come close to representing the technical and storytelling savvy that modern Hollywood artisans are so very good at. In other words, an action film like The Dark Knight. In other words, a Pixar feature like WALL-E. If today’s announcement did anything concrete, it certified a Big Picture nomination for Pixar’s Up and maybe — I mean, why not? — Star Trek. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up on Oscar-nomination morning and hear, for once, “And the nominees for Best Picture are … movies you’ve seen”?

(See the top 10 movies of 2008.)

In its first years, the late 1920s, the Academy allotted three, then five slots to the Best Picture nominees. In 1932, eight movies were cited; in 1933, 10; in 1934 and ’35, 12; then 10 nominees in the next eight years. Looking back, we can say the category rose to accommodate a burgeoning supply of first-rate films. And different kinds of films, even one in a foreign language: Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion, on the 1938 list.

(Read “How the Oscars Became the Emmys.”)

Everyone acknowledges that 1939 was a vintage Hollywood year for films. Gone With the Wind won eight awards, including Best Picture, defeating three other adaptations of famous novels — Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men and Goodbye, Mr. Chips — and Frank Capra’s all-time rabble-rousing political drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. If there’d been just five slots, the roll call might have ended there. But since 10 was the magic number, there was room for two transcendent weepies, Dark Victory (Bette Davis loses her sight) and Love Affair (Irene Dunne loses her legs), plus a musical, The Wizard of Oz, a western, Stagecoach, and a romantic comedy, Ninotchka — all of which are close to being the definitive examples of their genres.

Since the 1944 crop, it’s been five Best Picture nominees. And for a few decades, the voters admitted all manner of films to the annual quintet: noir (Double Indemnity), westerns (High Noon), comedies (Father of the Bride) and a slew of musicals. They often weren’t anywhere near the best pictures, but at a high-mediocre level, there was a welcome breath of selections.

Recently, though, the list has got pretty samey. Among this year’s top five were two popular films, the winning Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, buttressed by three strenuously worthy films — Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Reader — that appealed to the political preoccupations (Watergate, gays and the Holocaust) of the Academy’s venerable membership, and which almost nobody else cared to see.

See pictures of actors nominated for leading and supporting-role categories in the same year.

See pictures of the best Oscar dresses.

Left out were acclaimed movies that did sell a few tickets: The Dark Knight, the highest-grossing film since Titanic, and the Pixar instant-classic WALL-E, which had the top rating among critics of any 2008 release. Another animated feature, DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda, was brimming with brio; and didn’t Iron Man parade as much filmmaking skill as any of the nominated five? Not to mention, except skulkingly, under one critic’s breath, Speed Racer.

Stodgy types might dismiss these last five as genre films — sophisticated updates of the cartoons and B-movie action fodder with which Hollywood used to corral the kiddies at Saturday matinees. But, first of all, those unpedigreed items today outshine much of the solemn epics produced in the ’30s and ’40s. And second, the five chosen films of 2008 were all examples of a different kind of genre: the nobility-in-distress art-house drama. Ever since the mid-’90s, when Miramax Films’ Harvey Weinstein figured out how to win Oscars by assiduously promoting movies of elevated angst, the ceremony has been limited mostly to validating this very narrow film taste.

Yes, the three installments of The Lord of the Rings were nominated, and the last one won; but no episode of the Harry Potter series has been recognized, though they reside in popularity and quality just below the Tolkien trio. Judd Apatow has created his own genre, reviving comedy with his species of bromance; should that not have got some official nod? I might’ve slit my wrists if Mamma Mia! had been nominated last year, or Twilight. But why not give notice to a wider range of movies?

The critic in me would like to see Best Picture nominations for foreign-language films and documentaries. But the Academy-board poobahs aren’t trying to make room for more gnarly little art-house entries. They know that more people watch the Oscars in years when truly popular movies are among the finalists. The biggest ratings in the past 15 years have been when Titanic and LOTR: The Return of the King swept to victory. Ratings were up a bit this year; but if two big audience favorites, Slumdog and The Dark Knight, had gone head to head, the numbers might have been astronomical. This decision is all about ratings.

(Watch an interview with Slumdog composer A.R. Rahman.)

And money. With the expansion from five to 10 finalists comes a pushing back of the dates when the nominations will be announced (Feb. 2) and the awards show is held (March 7). That gives an extra two weeks for viewers to see the films that might be in contention and for studios to place ads in industry papers. (Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, which make their big money through these ads, may see a bonanza next winter.)

One thing the Academy knows that the public doesn’t: which films placed six to 10 in the Best Picture voting this past year. If the lower five slots had all gone to artsy fare like Doubt and Revolutionary Road, you can be sure we wouldn’t have heard today’s announcement. So the Academy must want Oscar night to be moderately reflective of the movies that real audiences came to, saw and were conquered by. It won’t be the People’s Choice Awards, but it won’t be the Independent Spirit Awards either. And for that we can be guardedly grateful.

See the 100 best movies of all time.

See pictures of Oscar’s youngest Best Actress nominees.