1997
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 1997
Best Picture
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/titanic-title.jpg)
TITANIC (1997)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/laconfidential.jpg)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/asgoodasitgets.jpg)
As Good As It Gets (1997)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/screens/goodwillhunting.jpg)
Good Will Hunting (1997)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/titles/fullymonty.jpg)
The Full Monty (1997, UK)
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Actor:
JACK NICHOLSON in "As Good As It Gets", Matt Damon
in "Good Will Hunting", Dustin Hoffman in "Wag
the Dog", Robert Duvall in "The Apostle", Peter
Fonda in "Ulee's Gold"
Actress:
HELEN HUNT in "As Good As It Gets", Judi Dench in "(Her
Majesty) Mrs Brown", Helena Bonham Carter in "The Wings
of the Dove", Kate Winslet in "Titanic", Julie
Christie in "Afterglow"
Supporting Actor:
ROBIN WILLIAMS in "Good Will Hunting", Robert Forster
in "Jackie Brown", Anthony Hopkins in "Amistad",
Greg Kinnear in "As Good As It Gets", Burt Reynolds
in
"Boogie Nights"
Supporting Actress:
KIM BASINGER in "L.A. Confidential", Joan Cusack in "In &
Out", Minnie Driver in "Good Will Hunting", Julianne
Moore in "Boogie Nights", Gloria Stuart in
"Titanic"
Director:
JAMES CAMERON for "Titanic", Peter Cattaneo for "The
Full Monty", Atom Egoyan for "The Sweet Hereafter",
Curtis Hanson for "L.A. Confidential", Gus Van Sant
for "Good Will Hunting"
Director-producer-screenwriter
James Cameron's three-hour mega-hit, Titanic - both
the most expensive film ever made AND the number one, most
successful box-office film of all-time (shared by 20th
Century Fox and Paramount Studios), was the fictionalized account
of the 1912 White Star Line cruise-ship disaster. Its tagline
was: "Nothing on Earth could come between them."
It was the
first Best Picture winner to gross over $1 billion (worldwide),
and $600 million (domestic). Cameron's film was both a love
story surrounded with the special-effects sinking of the 'unsinkable' Titanic on
its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York. The
reconstructed ship in the film was three-quarters actual size.
Titanic had a record number of nominations
and wins - fourteen, tying the all-time record set by All
About Eve (1950). That made it the second of
only two films to receive 14 Academy Award nominations, including
Best Picture.
It was also the second film to win 11 Academy
Awards, including Best Picture - it tied Ben-Hur
(1959) with eleven Oscar wins - the most Oscar
wins of any film in Academy Awards history. [The
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) would
equal the feat in six years with 11 wins.]
Both Titanic and Ben-Hur
(1959) failed to win Best Original Screenplay (Titanic wasn't
even nominated in the category), although both films won
Best Picture and Best Director honors. To date, it was
the last film to win Best Picture without a Screenplay
nomination (Adapted or Original); the last Best Picture
to not have its screenplay nominated was The
Sound of Music (1965).
[The earlier version, Titanic (1953), lacked
nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, but had two
nominations, including Best Art Direction and it won an Oscar
for Best Story and Screenplay - by Charles Brackett, Walter
Reisch, and Richard Breen.]
Its fourteen nominations included: Best Picture,
Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best
Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best
Film Editing, Best Make-up, Best Score, Best Song ("My
Heart Will Go On"), Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing,
and Best Visual Effects. Titanic lost only three awards
for which it was nominated - its two acting nominations, and
the Best Make-up nomination. The film wasn't even nominated
for its screenplay, and it lost its two actress nominations,
making it less of an acting film and more of a technical, craft-related
masterpiece. Leonardo DiCaprio in a lead role opposite nominated
Kate Winslet was denied a nomination. And 87 year-old veteran
actress Gloria Stuart was denied an Oscar - the award would
have made her the oldest recipient of an Oscar.
Titanic was the first Best Picture winner
to be produced, directed, written and edited by the
same individual - James Cameron. Cameron's win put him fifth
in a long line of directors who have triple wins for
director, writer, and producer for the same film: Leo McCarey
for Going My Way (1944), Billy Wilder for The
Apartment (1960), Francis Ford Coppola for The
Godfather, Part II (1974), and James L. Brooks for Terms
of Endearment (1983). Ontario-born James Cameron became
the first Canadian to win the Best Director award.
Its competition for Best Picture honors included
other big-studio films (unlike the previous year's nominations):
- co-writer/director Curtis Hanson's hard-boiled,
film-noirish crime drama based on James Ellroy's novel, L.A.
Confidential (with nine nominations and two wins - Best
Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) about many
levels of corruption (journalistic, political, police, etc.)
in a racially-tense 50s Hollywood; it was overwhelmed by
the big-budget production and star power of the ultimate
winner
- co-writer/director James Brooks' entertaining
romantic comedy As Good As It Gets (with seven nominations
and two wins - Best Actor and Best Actress) - a successful
follow-up vehicle to Brooks' own Best Picture-winning film Terms
of Endearment (1983) and the Oscar-less Broadcast
News (1987)
- independent director Gus Van Sant's Good
Will Hunting (with nine nominations and two wins -
Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay) from
the debut screenplay of actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck
about a troubled young genius Will Hunting from Boston's
working class who must work out his anger
- British director Peter Cattaneo's amusing
British comedy The Full Monty (with four nominations
and one win - Best Musical Score) about a group of unemployed
Yorkshire mill workers who striptease to make ends meet
Every director with a Best Picture nomination
was a first-time Best Director nominee. The winner of
the Best Director award was James Cameron for Titanic.
The only director with a Best Picture nomination who wasn't
included (and was snubbed) in the group of Best Director nominees
was James Brooks. His spot in the Best Director line-up was
taken by Canadian director/writer Atom Egoyan for his adaptation
of Russell Banks' novel The Sweet Hereafter (with two
nominations and no wins) about the aftermath of a tragic schoolbus
accident in a small British Columbia town.
Amazingly, both top acting awards were won by
the main lead performers in the same film, a comedy
- As Good As It Gets. This marked the seventh time
in 70 years that the two best acting Oscars were awarded to
the same film. The wins made it, to date, the last Best Picture
nominee to receive Best Actor and Best Actress wins.
- Jack Nicholson won the Best Actor Oscar (his
second) for his role as the rich, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive
romance novelist in New York named Melvin Udall, who frequents
the same restaurant every day and successfuly romances waitress
Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets
[It was Nicholson's third Oscar win - he had won earlier
as Best Actor for One
Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and as Best Supporting
Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983).
Nicholson's co-star in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest also
won the Best Actress Oscar, so he became a two-time recipient
(the only one in Oscar history) of a top award with his co-star.
This nomination was his eleventh career nomination.
His surpassed his two nearest competitors for the most nominations
- Laurence Olivier with ten nominations and Spencer Tracy with
nine nominations. Walter Brennan had won three Best
Supporting Actor nominations in 1936, 1938, and 1940. And Ingrid
Bergman had also won three Oscars - in 1944, in 1956,
and in 1974. Only one person had more Oscars - Katharine
Hepburn (with four).]
- Helen Hunt (with her first nomination and
Oscar win), the only American actress among the Best
Actress nominees, won the Best Actress Oscar as struggling,
working-class single-mother/waitress Carol Connelly in As
Good As It Gets.
[With her win, she became the first actress to win an
Oscar while simultaneously starring in a TV-sitcom (Mad
About You). The same feat had been duplicated in the Best
Supporting Actress category, by winners Goldie Hawn (in 1969
while on Laugh-In), and Cloris Leachman (in 1971 while
on The Mary Tyler Moore Show). Hunt also was the first
(and only) actress to win an Academy Award - and a Golden Globe
(both for As Good As It Gets), and an Emmy (for Mad
About You) in the same year.]
The remaining Best Actor nominees were:
- Matt Damon (with his first nomination) - the
only Best Actor nominee newcomer - for his title role as
a brilliant physics genius and janitor at MIT who must work
on his anger, the result of childhood abuse in Good Will
Hunting (instead of winning the acting award, Damon and
co-writer Ben Affleck won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar)
- Dustin Hoffman (with his seventh nomination)
as Hollywood producer Stanley Motss hired by White House
officials to divert attention in director Barry Levinson's
film based on David Mamet's adapted screenplay Wag the
Dog (with two nominations and no wins)
- actor/writer/director Robert Duvall (with
his fifth nomination) as Texas Pentecostal preacher Eulis
("Sonny") Dewey who becomes 'The Apostle' of God
in Louisiana to escape his past in The Apostle (the
film's sole nomination)
- veteran actor Peter Fonda (with his first
acting nomination) as Ulysses ("Ulee") Jackson,
a widowed, ex-Vietnam vet and beekeeper in director Victor
Nunez' Ulee's Gold (the film's sole nomination)
The other nominees in the Best Actress category,
all British competitors, included:
- Judi Dench (with her first nomination) as
the withdrawn, grieving Queen Victoria in director John Madden's (Her
Majesty) Mrs. Brown (with two nominations and no wins)
- Helena Bonham Carter (with her first nomination)
as well-bred, penniless Kate Croy in director Iain Softley's
beautiful romance inspired by Henry James' 1902 novel The
Wings of the Dove (with four nominations and no wins)
- Kate Winslet (with her second nomination)
as upper-class debutante Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic
- Julie Christie (with her third nomination
- coming 32 years after her Oscar win in 1965 and 26 years
after her previous Oscar nomination in 1971) as ex-B-movie
actress Phyllis Mann in director Alan Rudolph's Afterglow (the
film's sole nomination), about two couples with marital difficulties
who mix and match
In the Best Supporting Actor category, Robin
Williams (with his fourth nomination and first win)
won his first Oscar for his performance as psychotherapist
Sean McGuire, who assists the young working-class genius Will
in Good Will Hunting.
The other four Best Supporting Actor competitors
were:
- Robert Forster (with his first nomination)
as bail bondsman Max Cherry in writer/director Quentin Tarantino's
crime film, an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, Jackie
Brown (the film's sole nomination)
- Anthony Hopkins (with his fourth nomination)
as ex-President and slave defender John Quincy Adams in director
Steven Spielberg's Amistad (with four nominations
and no wins)
- Greg Kinnear (with his first nomination) as
Simon Bishop - co-star Jack Nicholson's gay next-door neighbor
with a dog who often asks his disapproving parents for money
in As Good As It Gets
- Burt Reynolds (with his first nomination)
as adult film director Jack Horner in writer/director Paul
Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (with three nominations
and no wins), a look at the decadent porn industry in the
70s and 80s
In the Best Supporting Actress category, Kim
Basinger (with her first nomination) won her first Oscar
for her role as glamorous, sultry movie-star look-a-like (a
la Veronica Lake) - a high-priced prostitute Lynn Bracken
in the noirish L.A. Confidential.
The other Best Supporting Actress nominees were:
- Joan Cusack (with her second nomination) as
fiancee Emily Montgomery, engaged to high school English
teacher (co-star Kevin Kline) who is outed as gay - in director
Frank Oz' In and Out (the film's sole nomination)
- Minnie Driver (with her first nomination)
as Will's (Matt Damon) affluent British girlfriend Skylar,
a Harvard College student on her way to medical school at
Stanford in California, in Good Will Hunting
- Julianne Moore (with her first nomination)
as cocaine-addicted porn star Amber Waves in Boogie Nights
- favored 87 year-old Gloria Stuart as Old Rose
- the 101 year-old survivor of the disastrous ship accident
in Titanic
[It was the first time in Oscar history
that two performers - Kate Winslet as young Rose, and Gloria
as Old Rose - were nominated for playing the same character in
the same film. (This would also occur in 2001, when Judi
Dench and Kate Winslet were both nominated for playing Iris
in Iris (2001).) Gloria Stuart's nomination made her
the oldest performer ever nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Supporting Actress. Her closest elderly performer
was 82 year-old Jessica Tandy nominated for Best Supporting
Actress for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). Tandy, who
won the Oscar two years earlier for Driving Miss Daisy (1989),
was the oldest performer ever to win a Best Actress
Oscar.]
This year's Honorary Oscar was awarded to 73
year-old Stanley Donen, a legendary choreographer/director
who helped to revolutionize the musical, "in appreciation
of a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit, and visual
innovation. He had never been nominated in his entire
career - for such films as Cover Girl (1944), Anchors
Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), Take Me Out
to the Ball Game (1949), Royal Wedding (1951), Singin'
in the Rain (1952), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
(1954), It's Always Fair Weather (1955), The
Pajama Game (1957), Funny Face (1957) and Damn
Yankees (1958). He was also responsible for Indiscreet
(1958), The Grass is Greener (1961), Charade
(1963), and Two for the Road (1967).
Woody Allen's Best Original Screenplay Oscar
win for Deconstructing Harry - his thirteenth nomination
in that category (in 1977, 1978, 1979, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987,
1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, and 1997), was one more than
Billy Wilder's record of 12 screenplay nominations (in 1939,
1941 (twice), 1944, 1945, 1948, 1950, 1951, 1954, 1959, 1960,
1966).
Oscar Snubs and Omissions:
Kevin Spacey wasn't nominated as Best Supporting
Actor for his role as Hollywood celebrity detective Jack Vincennes
in L.A. Confidential, nor was Philip Seymour Hoffman
for his performance as adult film soundman Scotty in Boogie
Nights. And Rupert Everett lacked a nomination for his
role as editor George Downes - Julia Roberts' gay confidante
in the popular romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding,
as did Ian Holm for his performance as defense lawyer Mitchell
Stephens in Atom Egoyan's drama The Sweet Hereafter.
Three films were completely neglected:
- Ang Lee's dramatic tale of dysfunctional families
in 1973 suburban Connecticut in The Ice Storm, with
Sigourney Weaver and Joan Allen as the two married Connecticut
housewives: adulterous Janey Carver and Elena Hood; Kevin
Kline took the role of distant husband Ben Hood, who was
engaged in an affair with Janey; Christina Ricci also starred
as 14 year-old daughter Wendy Hood, and Tobey Maguire portrayed
16 year-old son Paul
- David Fincher's psychological thriller The
Game, with Michael Douglas as investment banker Nicholas
Van Orton
- Neil LaBute's script and directorial effort
(his debut film) for In the Company of Men, featuring
Aaron Eckhart as slimy, evil and misogynistic businessman
Chad, and Stacy Edwards as victimized and fragile deaf secretary/typist
Christine - presumably, the film's mature, brutal and sordid
themes, that also contributed to its difficulty in finding
a US distributor, made it difficult for the mainstream Academy
to honor it -- although it received accolades at the Sundance
Film Festival
And Mike Newell's gangster film Donnie Brasco,
with Al Pacino as aging mobster Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero and
Anne Heche as Maggie Pistone, was recognized with only one
nomination - for Best Adapted Screenplay. Alison Elliott was
not nominated for her supporting performance as dying, terminally-ill
heiress Millie Theale in The Wings of the Dove, Robin
Wright Penn was neglected for her transformative role as white-trash
junkie Maureen in She's So Lovely, and Parker Posey
was bypassed for playing incest-obsessed, neurotic twin Jackie
in the underated Wendy MacLeod play adaptation The House
of Yes.
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