Where would the Oscars be without European literature?
Last night saw the ever glamorous Academy Awards, or Oscars, take place in Hollywood. This year – the awards’ 85th - saw many nominations for two films derived from great works of European literature: Les Misérables and Anna Karenina.
‘Les Miserables’, Victor Hugo, French National Library (Public Domain)
Les Misérables, which was up for ‘Best Picture’, is based of course on French novelist Victor Hugo’s work. You can read his original handwritten text in Europeana. Anne Hathaway won the ‘Best Actress in a Supporting Role’ award for her portrayal of Fantine, and the film picked up other gongs for ‘Makeup and Hair Styling’ and ‘Sound Mixing’. The film and its team also received nominations in the categories of ‘Best Actor’, ‘Costume Design’, ‘Production Design’, and ‘Music – original song’ for ‘Suddenly’ – a song not in the original musical version by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg.
The film Anna Karenina, based on Leo Tolstoy’s great work, won the ‘Costume Design’ category and was also nominated for ‘Cinematography’, ‘Music – original score’, and ‘Production Design’.
European film, Amour, won the ‘Best Foreign Film’ Oscar and was also nominated for the prestigious award of ‘Best Picture’, losing out in the end to Argo, a film about the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis. Star of Amour, Emmanuelle Riva was nominated for ‘Best Actress’, and director Michael Haneke was up for the ‘Directing’ category. The film was also up for the ‘Writing – original screenplay’ category.
At 85-years-old, Emmanuelle Riva is the oldest actress ever to be nominated for a ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award. There are just over 100 items relating to Emmanuelle Riva on Europeana, including stunning photographs, and stills from Adua e le compagne and Hiroshima Mon Amour (for which she was BAFTA nominated in 1960).
Claudette Colbert won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ in It Happened One Night (1934). ‘Artiste de cinéma Claudette Colbert, dans sa piscine à Hollywood : [photographie de presse] / Acmé’, French National LIbrary, public domain
Photo of Ernest Borgnine receiving academy award for Marty from Grace Kelly. A Certain Cinema, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons.
Whilst it’s unlikely that any of us will ever get to hold an Oscar in our hands, like Ernest Borgnine and Grace Kelly in this photo, we can get pretty close – on Europeana, you can explore a 3D representation of the Oscar statue. Now, all you need to do is start practising that acceptance speech…
well, the Oscar is presticious. need some struggle by someone can get it.
Don’t forget Ian Fleming either – Skyfall won one or two as well.
Argo got the best picture gong but without doubt Les Miserables should have got it! Yes the Oscars could not live without European literature i totally agree.