Handicapping the Foreign Oscar

By RICHARD CORLISS

They should be the best of the rest of the world: five films representing the cream of international cinema. Yet this year, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominees for Best Foreign-Language Film, you could almost hear a chorus of groans in a dozen tongues. What are these movies? Who ever heard of these directors? Who chooses these things, anyway? Qu'est-ce qui se passe? On Oscar night next Monday, five anonymous films will be filling slots that might have been reserved for Fellini or Bergman, for A Sunday in the Country or A Love in Germany. When TV viewers hear "And the winner is . . ." they may well ask, "Who cares?"

The award was once worth caring about. Since 1947, when the Italian film Shoeshine was the first foreign-language film to receive an Oscar, the category has honored both landmark art (The Bicycle Thief, Rashomon, Through a Glass Darkly, 8 1/2) and sophisticated diversion (Seven Samurai, Z, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Day for Night). The Academy might err on the side of aesthetic conservatism; trailblazers such as Godard, Antonioni and Fassbinder were never so much as finalists for the prize, and directors like Bergman and Truffaut were cited years after their films had won critical acceptance. But in general the foreign Oscar was a distinguished overseas cousin to the Best Picture award.

Can the same be said for Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, the Soviet film that won the 1980 foreign Oscar? Or Volver a Empezar, the Spanish winner two years ago? Or for all the films nominated this year? The answer is no, and part of the problem is the Academy's cumbersome selection procedure that has evolved over the years--a procedure devised to be fair to the diversity of national cinemas. In recent years, 20 or more films have been submitted, one film to a country, chosen by indigenous committees of filmmakers, critics and bureaucrats; this year there were 32 films. Then 160 selected Academy members review the submissions; each member must see 80% of the films in order to vote; the top five vote getters are the nominees. All 4,300 Academy members are invited to see and vote on the final five, but they must see all five films in order to cast ballots.

Throughout, the procedure is subject to corruption, politics and lethargy. Says French Director Bertrand Tavernier: "In countries like the Philippines, Brazil, Chile, Poland and the U.S.S.R., no committee is going to nominate a film that threatens the status quo." Further, the Academy's one-film-per- country restriction penalizes nations with thriving film industries. U.S. Screenwriter David Newman (Bonnie and Clyde) asks, "Why can't Academy members vote for three French and two German films if they happen to be the best? Foreign films should be selected on the same basis as the others: quality." Tavernier blames the rule on the "protectionism and provincialism" of Hollywood: "It's as if the Americans are saying to the rest of us, 'You are enti- tled to produce one good film a year.' "

As it happens, Tavernier is an interested and aggrieved party in the debate. His lovely elegy, A Sunday in the Country, earned the director's prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival and citation by the New York Film Critics as best foreign film of 1984. No matter: the French selection committee passed over Sunday, as well as respected new films by Eric Rohmer and Maurice Pialat, in favor of Claude Berri's tepid thriller Tchao Pantin. As one Academy official noted, "Tavernier's picture would probably have won the award. But we don't tell each country which film to nominate." The final irony: Tchao Pantin was snubbed by the Academy prescreening committee.

And what of the five films that were chosen? All fit the aesthetic and political preferences of the Academy's middle-brow, predominantly liberal membership. The Israeli entry, Uri Barbash's Beyond the Walls, is both a ! Searing Indictment of the local prison system and an odd Hymn to the Human Spirit; its message seems to be that Arabs and Jews can live as brothers if only they stick it to the screws. Pyotr Todorovsky's War-Time Romance (the ninth Soviet film to have won a nomination in the past 17 years) ladles on the pathos in its tale of a wimpy soldier who falls in love with a beautiful nurse. Pristinely primitive in technique, the film is notable only for Actress Natalia Andreichenko--not tops in the emoting department but a true Slavic stunner. A third nominee, Jose Luis Garci's Double Feature (Spain), pays wan tribute to the magic of movies. The film finds some wit in the bantering of two rueful screenwriters; still, this turn was faster and funnier when James Cagney and Pat O'Brien did it 47 years ago in Boy Meets Girl.

That leaves the two films most likely to succeed. Camila, from Argentine Director Maria Luisa Bemberg, describes the doomed love affair between a young lady of high and independent spirits and a progressive Jesuit priest in the Buenos Aires of 1847. Even as Camila is attracted to the delicious danger of causing scandal, Bemberg revels in the perquisites of kitsch: a little erotic incandescence here, a bit of soft-focus dappling there, and for good measure a flash of lightning in church to signal God's rebuke to this theologian of sexual liberation. Once it warms up, the film's fever is contagious.

Dangerous Moves (Switzerland) is the smart, gossipy story of a world chess championship between an aging Soviet Jew (Michel Piccoli) and a young defector to the West (Alexandre Arbatt). The prodigy may be impulsive and paranoid; the old lion's methodical style may be "like Georgian champagne--too much sugar and not enough flavor." But both men are obsessed with the game; they practice on airplanes, in bed, in the swimming pool. In his first feature, WriterDirector Richard Dembo nicely conveys that obsession, while weaving into his plot tidbits of political and sexual intrigue from the 1978 Karpov- Korchnoi match.

Like Camila, Desperate Moves offers chic, vigorous entertainment. If neither film is within hailing distance of Tavernier's minimasterpiece, both provide the Academy with an honorable way out of a procedure that, as Filmmaker Paul Mazursky charges, "obviously doesn't work." One must hope, though, that when these two films find theatrical release, they attract more moviegoers than they did Academy members. The average screening for a foreign nominee is attended by only about 400 voters. Thus the winner of this coveted, tainted statuette may have been the preference of no more than a hundred hearty souls. Who cares about the foreign Oscar? Not the public. And the Academy? Not enough.

With reporting by Alexandra Tuttle/Paris