6. Francis Ford Coppola Loses Best Director for The Godfather/The Godfather Wins Only Three Oscars
Many people like to think back on Academy history and think, “well, of course Coppola won the Best Director Oscar for the first Godfather film. Duh!” Believe it or not, that’s not the way it happened. Despite winning the Directors Guild award, come Oscar night, Coppola was defeated by Bob Fosse for his direction on Cabaret. Let that sink in a minute: one of the best directed films of all time was defeated by Fosse’s direction on Cabaret. That’s not to insult Cabaret, which is a fine musical film. But to compare the direction, well, there there is no comparison. Coppola wins hands down. No question about it.
So what in the world happened here? Well, it could be that the Academy was still nostalgic for the days of musicals gone by. The 60s saw them giving four musicals Best Picture and Best Director, so still being in that state of mind, perhaps they just wanted to continue. But when it came right down to it, they couldn’t deny The Godfather Best Picture, so a split occurred. At least, this is my best guess. For all I know, they took leave of their senses and randomly voted. However it happened, it’s rather amusing to look back at it now and see where both films are. Nobody talks about Cabaret or how it was directed nowadays, but The Godfather is revered as one of the greatest films ever made, and is currently tied for #21 on the Critics poll and tied for #7 on the Directors poll for Sight & Sound (the most prestigious cinematic poll in the world). You won’t find Cabaret anywhere on either list.
What some may find even more shocking was that The Godfather, again, considered one of the greatest films ever made, only won a total of three Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay). Besides not winning Best Director, it failed to take Best Film Editing or Best Supporting Actor (despite having three nominees in the category). Ironically, both of these also went to Cabaret. Joel Grey gives a fine performance in Cabaret, but he’s pretty much only there to sing songs on stage and doesn’t really get the chance to become a full character in the film. However, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall were nominated for The Godfather, and while Duvall isn’t in the film that much, Pacino and Caan deliver stunning performances that were both worthy of the Oscar.
Another shocking fact is that The Godfather wasn’t even nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, two more that most would just assume the film received. Take a guess which film received those awards instead. That’s right. Cabaret. At the end of the night, Cabaret took a total of eight Oscars, compared to Godfather’s three, an unheard of occurrence then and one that has not happened since, though we just might be seeing such a thing happen this year between Gravity and 12 Years a Slave.
You don’t have to feel too bad for Coppola though. The Academy would sort of make up for their mistake by awarding him Best Director for The Godfather Part II just two years later, though it still doesn’t excuse the fact that they pushed him aside for the first film. This is one of those errors that they’ve just had to live with. True, they goofed for Best Director, but at least they managed to give the film Best Picture. Can you imagine the uproar if they hadn’t been able to do that at least?
