It’s humbling to realize that the films considered the best acheivemernts of the year and celebrated at the legendary awards evening known as the ‘Oscars’ may well turn into utterly unwatchable obscurities in a quick ninety to one-hundred years. (Actually it’s more likely that a couple of decades is enough to render many highly thought of movies of their era creaky and peculiar). Above is a nicely done mini-doc on the nominees of the very first Oscar ceremony in 1928. Titles like ‘The Patriot’, ‘Alibi’, ‘In Old Arizona’ will likely mean nothing to anyone except the most fastidious (read ‘geeky’) film buff. Yet by the standards of the day, they were judged to be superior achievements. It’s a sad fact for all filmmakers that their work will likely not have a lenghy shelf life unless it’s a period film, in which case the movie is supposed to look dated–that’s the whole point, after all. Styles change–people’s hairstyles from the 1980s makes watching many films of the era impossible to focus on as we stare in mute shock at how we once thought we looked when well-groomed. People running around desperately looking for telephone booths, cars that don’t start during chase scenes, typewriters clacking away, intense crime or legal research being conducted at libraries–all of these things of the past can stop a movie in its tracks. And then there’s film technique. The 1928 best picture nominees were, at least partially, early talking pictures. And charming though early talkies can be, they’re best viewed as artifacts of a dead past and not as conventional drama. Indeed, Leslie Halliwell once singled out the Marx Brothers ‘The Coaconuts’ as “the only early sound film that one can now watch without extreme discomfort.” I sense the same opinion might turn up in years to come when the more conventionally shot movies of our era will look hopelessly antiquated and overly formal. Acting styles are another story–the stiff, mid-Atlantic accented styles of the twenties and early thirties are just plain goofy to us now ( much though I love them). I’m not putting money on which stars of our day will look peculiarly of their time…but I bet that anyone playing a so-called ‘Oscar bait’ role–in other words a person with an affliction but who doesn’t actually have that affliction–will be regarded as a symbol of the insensitivity of our cultural era. In fact, we might already be there…