Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1992

The Contenders:

Robert Downey Jr.: Chaplin
Stephen Rea: The Crying Game
Denzel Washington: Malcolm X
Al Pacino: Scent of a Woman (winner)
Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven

Misery Loathes Company

Films: Profumo di Donna (Scent of a Woman)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Al Pacino, someone who almost certainly earned any number of Oscars in his career, finally won for Scent of a Woman. That movie is a sort of remake of Profumo di Donna from the mid-1970s. Pacino’s win tends to be considered one of the clearest examples of someone winning a lifetime achievement Oscar in the guise of a competitive one. Pacino’s performance is all bluster and shouting, and I ultimately kind of liked the movie in spite of itself. I was concerned about this original version, though, and now that I’ve seen it, I think I have clear reason why I was hesitant.

One of the big changes here is that Profumo di Donna has substantially less plot than its later remake. The culmination of Scent of a Woman is the “trial” scene. This doesn’t happen in Profumo di Donna. In fact, all of the elements of the remake that don’t deal overtly with the blind former military guy and his desire to end his life don’t appear in the original film at all. The two most famous scenes from Pacino’s film—the speech at the end and the tango—aren’t here. What this means is that Profumo di Donna is about a young Army cadet (not a student) follows around a blind ex-military man and, to use the advertising copy parlance, learns valuable life lessons.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1992

The Contenders:

Enchanted April
Howards End (winner)
The Player
A River Runs Through It
Scent of a Woman

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1992

The Contenders:
Neil Jordan: The Crying Game
James Ivory: Howards End
Robert Altman: The Player
Martin Brest: Scent of a Woman
Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1992

The Contenders:
The Crying Game
A Few Good Men
Howards End
Scent of a Woman
Unforgiven (winner)

Scent of a Woman

Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s no secret that there are Oscars awarded for performances that may not have earned them for careers that contained performances that did. How else to explain Paul Newman winning for The Color of Money? Well, he didn’t win for Hud and Cool Hand Luke and more than half a dozen other films. I’ve always sort of been under the impression that Al Pacino’s Oscar for Scent of a Woman was of the same variety. It’s caused me to dread the film a little.

This is, in fact, evidence of Pacino in over-the-top mode, but that’s not always a bad thing. Still, there’s that niggling feeling that the Academy realized he’d lost for Glengary Glen Ross, Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather Part II and a few others and maybe it was time to give the man his due. Even for this role, which is Pacino writ as large as possible without becoming a complete caricature.