Daniel
Day-Lewis - a Briton - as President Abraham Lincoln.
Europe Cleans Up - and Weighs in - at 2013 Oscars (NeueZuercherZeitung, Switzerland)
"The European film industry is much more important in the U.S.
today than in past decades. ... European audiences watch the Oscars with
greater interest than ever, because they are now better able to enter the
discussion. In the past, most American films being honored hadn't yet been
shown in European theaters, so viewers didn't have a chance to understand the nominees.
Now there are virtually no movies that haven't been shown in our theaters
before the awards are presented. In an era of vanishing movie theaters and
declining attendance, Hollywood has recognized that it cannot survive without
the European market - nor does it want to."
The Old World had already triumphed at the Academy Awards:
In 2012, The Artist, a
black and white silent film by a Frenchman, won five of the film world's most
coveted trophies, proving that traditional "small" film art can
prevail against technology-loving blockbusters with exorbitant budgets. It was
an homage to the American factory of dreams that, of all things, Europe instilled
some fear in Hollywood. This year there were so many American films of great artistic
quality on subjects of urgent importance that members of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences were unable to agree on a clear favorite. Applying
the watering can principle, it distributed the four most important Oscars -
Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress - among these many
American films, with Ben Affleck's political thriller Argo
apparently being more likely to garner consensus than Steven Spielberg's
politically-analytical presidential biography Lincoln - in spite of the fact that the latter was intellectually
more sophisticated - possibly too much so to achieve widespread approval.
The public can have
its say
Europe again emerged as a winner on Oscar night, insofar as
Austrian director Michael Haneke deservedly won the award for Best Foreign
Language Film for his tender old age drama Amour - and
his countryman Christoph Waltz won his second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in
a film by Quentin Tarantino, first for Inglorious
Bustards and now for Django
Unchained. And the exceptional performance of Britain Daniel Day-Lewis as
Abraham Lincoln earned him his third Academy Award for Best Actor, a record in
Oscar history. At this point, it wouldn't be amiss to remember that the first
person ever awarded an acting Oscar was also European: German Emil Jannings
was awarded the Best Actor prize in 1929 for his roles in American films The Last
Command and The Way of all Flesh.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
The European film industry is much more important in the U.S.
today than in past decades, and that doesn't include the countless remakes of
European films made by American directors, such as the comedy Prince Avalanche, based
on an Icelandic film and recently honored at the Berlin Film Festival. European
movie audiences watch the Oscars with greater interest than ever, because they
are now better able to enter the discussion. In the past, most American films
being honored hadn't yet been shown in European movie theaters, so viewers
didn't have a chance to understand the nominees. Now, however, there are virtually
no movies that haven't been shown in our theaters before the awards are
presented. In an era of vanishing movie theaters and declining attendance,
Hollywood has recognized that it cannot survive without the European market - nor
does it want to. As a result, movies are exported early enough to allow them to
commercially benefit from the media hype surrounding the Academy Awards. It's a
win-win situation, because the public here is happy to be able to cast an Oscar
vote of its own so to speak at the movie box office.
Moreover, production conditions in some European countries,
such as Germany, are so inexpensive - not least due to generous subsidies -
that more and more American filmmakers, who don't enjoy the same advantages at
home, seek to benefit by filming in Potsdam-Babelsberg's
well-booked studios. Nearby Berlin has not only emerged as a desirable film
location, but as a desirable setting for a story, as in the thriller Unknown
(2011) and Passion (2012).
Sore loser
The biggest loser at the Oscars, however, can also be found
abroad. Iran called the award
for Argo, which deals with the
liberation of U.S. Embassy staff held hostage in Teheran in the early 1980s,
"politically motivated," a criticism that was provoked by the fact
that the award was presented by Michelle Obama, something that was not likely entirely
coincidental. But the fact that the Iranian regime, which has announced a film
to counter Argo, sees itself
pressured to react at every turn by bringing out the heavy artillery - as with
the recent attempt at intimidation directed at Iranian director JafarPanahi, who was honored at the Berlin Film
Festival and is persecuted in his homeland - reveals an enormous sense of insecurity.
But threats won't silence Iranian artists: On the contrary, it will draw more
attention to them, even in their own country.
