“F For Fake” (1973)
We’ll acknowledge that, were “F For Fake” to be nominated for an Oscar, there probably would have been a fair old fuss about it. Orson Welles‘ final masterpiece is nominally a documentary, beginning as a BBC project about art forger Elmyr de Hory, originally only to be narrated by Welles. At some point, after it emerged that Clifford Irving, who’d featured in the footage in his guise as de Hory’s biographer, had himself pulled off a giant hoax by fabricating an “authorized” biography of Howard Hughes, Welles took over the project, and turned it into something quite different, and quite remarkable, a meta-tastic, undoubtedly self-indulgent and self-satisfied examination into fakery, to the extent that much of the film’s last half-hour, involving Welles’ girlfriend Oja Kodar and Pablo Picasso, appears to be made up. But truth is subjective, and the playfulness of the way Welles approaches his subject enhances its themes in a way that a more straight-ahead film probably wouldn’t be able to manage. And it would have to be a film: Welles is commenting on the artform that dominated his life as much as he is on anything that Hory and Irving have managed. It’s a dense film, heady with ideas, but hugely entertaining too, even as its digressions occasionally spin off into dead ends. It’s sort of unclassifiable, which is probably one of the reasons it didn’t get an Oscar nomination (along with the fairly mediocre tastes of the selection committee, and Welles’ general outsider status in Hollywood at that point). But if there’d been a category for best documentary/fiction/cinematic essay/experiment/trick, it surely would have been a shoe-in…
“Hoop Dreams” (1994)
Probably the best-known of the Oscar-snubbed documentaries, and the second of the two 1994 films, along with “Crumb,” that finally caused a change in the system (the film had been touted by some as a possible Best Picture nominee, so that it failed to be even nominated as a documentary caused a bona-fide outcry), “Hoop Dreams” still stands today as one of the finest films about sports ever made. Directed by Steve James (whose equally terrific “The Interrupters” also missed a nod more than fifteen years later, and whose new Roger Ebert tribute “Life Itself” is pretty great too), the film was originally intended to be a half-hour short for PBS, but grew and grew over time into a three-hour epic that took eight years to shoot. It follows William Gates and Arthur Agee, two hugely talented young basketball players recruited by a scout for a mostly white high school with a top basketball program. At one level, it’s a tiny story, about two good kids who struggle with everyday pressures to get by and maybe build a better future. On the other (like several of these movies), it’s a film about America, and the American dream, unsentimentally drawing a picture of the low-income households from which the kids come from, while never promising that their sporting prowess will actually prove to be their way out. It captures real life in a way that the form so often promises, but very rarely manages, which isn’t to say that there’s no artifice, but more that it’s hidden masterfully by James (who really is a top-flight filmmaker). It was never lacking in acclaim—Ebert would later call it the best film of the 1990s, and it did even manage an Oscar nod for Best Editing, deservedly so. But that the documentary committee couldn’t see its worth (reportedly, it was turned off after twenty minutes) simply begs belief, given that it’s one of the crowning achievements of the documentary artform.
“Paris Is Burning” (1990)
To its credit, the documentary category has often been a way for the Academy to spotlight certain minorities or subcultures that might yet take decades to make an impact in the mainstream categories. But there was a limit to that, and that must have been one of the reasons that “Paris Is Burning” was ignored by the Academy, despite being probably the most acclaimed documentary film of its year. Directed by Jennie Livingston, it peeks behind the curtain of “ball culture,” walk-offs between drag artists who belonged to a system of houses. Hitting just as Madonna‘s “Vogue” was helping to bring the world into the mainstream, it takes an expansive and in-depth look at the scene, deftly introducing wider audiences to a culture that must have been rather alien to many (including, presumably, those voting for the Documentary Oscar). The performance scenes are vivid and energetic, capturing the buzz and appeal of the balls, but just as memorable is the way it draws the politics of the scenes (the rivalry between the different houses), and the personality of its figures, permanent outsiders who’ve found a scene where they finally fit in. The film’s undoubtedly dated a bit in the intervening years, and one almost wishes for a sequel, given the tragic fate of some of its protagonists (one prominent figure, Dorian Corey, died in 1993, at which point a mummified body, dead for over 15 years, was found in her apartment), but it’s still a beautiful snapshot of a time, a place, and the people who lived there. Given that it was something of a hit at the time (one of the films that helped make the name of Miramax), and that it won prizes from Sundance, Berlin and the New York Film Critics Circle, it’s very puzzling that it was so ignored by the Academy.
“Point Of Order” (1964)
That “Point Of Order” was rejected from the New York Film Festival for “not being a real movie” is symptomatic of the lack of imagination that the Academy’s documentary branch can bring to their picks. As recently as “Grizzly Man,” they’ve been (often incorrectly, as in the case of the Herzog film) disqualifying movies that are only made up of archive footage, and few of those films that slipped through the crack have been better than “Point Of Order.” Directed by Emile de Antonio (the legendary groundbreaking political documentarian, who was nominated for the 1968 film “In The Year Of The Pig,” about the origins of the Vietnam war), it creates a 90-minute collage reconstructing the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the U.S. Army’s accusations that Senator Joseph McCarthy had attempted to win influence for a former employee, Private G. David Schine, helped to ruin McCarthy’s reputation, and end his reign of terror. It’s an admittedly academic and dry approach, without cutting to later recollections, or ever even leaving the room of the hearings, but it’s incredibly rigorous in its formal restrictions, and all the more fascinating for it. There’s a hypnotic quality to its rhythms (not least in watching the repulsively charismatic McCarthy work his magic), and it’s quietly, subtly constructed into a real courtroom thriller. By the time it reaches its emotional climax—as the dignified, powerful Joseph Welch tears McCarthy to shreds, telling him, famously, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency”—you realize the powerful craft of de Antonio’s cutting. You can see for yourself now—the film is available in full on YouTube.