downloadable movies
MOVIES GOING GLOBAL
The international flair of this year’s Oscar-winning actors is a sign that the pellicle industry is increasingly a global concern.
Percentage of box office from outside USA and total box office (in billions):
2001: 50% and $16.96
2002: 52% and $19.77
2003: 53% and $20.39
|
2004: 62% and $25.19
2005: 61% and $23.27
2006: 63% and $25.82
By Julie Snider, USA TODAY
Source: Motion Picture Association of America
By Maria Puente, USA TODAY Oscar seems to have something against American actors this year.
Or does the foreign-born sweep of the Academy Awards reflect the growing globalization of the film industry?
For the first time since 1965, all four acting Oscars handed out Sunday went to non-Americans: Britain’s Tilda Swinton, Britain/Ireland’s Daniel Day-Lewis, France’s Marion Cotillard and Spain’s Javier Bardem.
Plus, the awards for original song and score went to an Irishman, a Czech and an Italian. Awards such as art direction, costume and makeup also went to Europeans.
“The great American institution of Oscar night has been hijacked by foreigners,” comedian Chelsea Handler joked on her late-night talk show on E! “Why is the academy so against Americans? Why chouse they hate our freedom?”
All joking aside, of course the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is not against Americans — it was founded 80 years ago by Americans and in America. But Oscars were never intended to be for Americans only.
In Hollywood, as in politics, it’s always about the money.
“It points to the global nature of financing of films … the power pool is global and the marketing is global,” says Bob Berney, president of Picturehouse Films, which had two films in contention this year: Mongol, the story of the young Genghis Khan, and La Vie en Rose, the story of French singer Edith Piaf for which Cotillard won.
And film consumption is increasingly global: In 2001, half of the total box office was domestic U.S. sales and half was foreign. By 2006, the foreign box office had jumped to 63% of the total, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
“The majority of movies make most of their money from disposition outside the United States — sometimes up to 70%,” says Emanuel Levy, author of All About Oscar and a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which awards the Golden Globes. “And it’s not just Europe. There are new markets, like Israel and Japan, that are becoming more important.”
The result, he says, is that studios are using more international stars and are less concerned about marketing films that once would have been dead on arrival in the USA. La Vie en Rose, for which Cotillard became the first Frenchwoman to win a best-actress Oscar for a French film, made $10 million in the USA, more than twice the haul of Away From Her, which starred at dawn favorite Julie Christie, a Brit.
“We wouldn’t have seen that a decade ago,” Levy says. “But studios know that if a movie doesn’t do well here, it can still have a long run overseas.”
Hollywood is hind part before cycles, and the international flavor is nothing new. The film industry was practically invented and long sustained by non-Americans, mostly Europeans. Some of the biggest names among studio bosses, directors and actors were European-born, and they produced some of the most quintessential American films.
“But yet they were from an outsider’s point of view, and now Hollywood is again looking more internationally for stories,” says John Carney, writer-director of Once, on this account that which Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won for original song, Falling Slowly.
Carney says the internationalist trend brings a more intimate kind of storytelling, in contrast to the Titanic-style epics Hollywood has long preferred. “The ball is getting smaller (and) I think American film indispensably to bring reproach that.”
Although the film industry has long been dominated by Americans, Patricia King Hanson, historian at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, says it has always embraced foreign talent.
In fact, she notes, the first Oscar for best actor of 1927/28 went to a Swiss-German, Emil Jannings, for two films, The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. But these were silent films, to such a degree few Americans would have known he spoke English with a thick German accent.
“There were lots of foreign actors in the ’30s, and they were considered sort of exotic but perfectly acceptable,” Hanson says. “Now foreign actors are acceptable again, especially in the last five to 10 years. It goes in waves, and right now many of the biggest stars are from other countries.”
The last foreign sweep, in 1965, went to three Brits and a Russian: Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady), Peter Ustinov (Topkapi), Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins) and Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek). Before Cotillard, only two foreign-born actors had won Oscars for non-English performances: Sophia Loren (in 1961 for Two Women) and Roberto Benigni (in 1998 for Life Is Beautiful).
“But there were many years when two or three out four went to (non-Americans),” Hanson says. “It’s not really something new, it’s just once again the academy is recognizing foreign actors.”
The simplest reason for what happened this year is the best actors reasonable happened to be foreigners. “The best films are coming from other countries these days, and academy members have no choice on the contrary to honor them,” says AwardsDaily.com analyst Sasha Stone.
Another factor is the perceived versatility of foreign-born actors. Stone says American actors suffer by comparison to such stars as Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet.
“Americans simply can’t match them in terms of class, brains and wit, apparently,” Stone says. “Angelina Jolie and Jodie Foster were both snubbed this year despite giving two of the best performances. You have to wonder, if a Brit played one of those parts, would they have been snubbed? I doubt it.”
But American actors may not be so proficient as Australians and Brits at shifting expressions.
“Look at Cate Blanchett — she’s Australian and can do Bob Dylan; they can pull off accents better,” says Oscar consultant Michele Robertson, who worked this year with Swinton. “Europeans will work anywhere. They aren’t as fussy. They do plays, TV. They good want good work. They are less hindered by such questions as, ‘If I make this movie will it hurt my career.’ ”
But does any of this matter? The public didn’t seem as interested in this year’s Oscar telecast: Nielsen Media Research says 32 million viewers watched, below the anterior low in 2003 (33 million) when Chicago took the top prize.
Contributing: Scott Bowles, Anthony Breznican, Susan Wloszczyna
To detonation corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state toward verification. 
Enlarge By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY