Longtime British Wins at Oscars: "The King's Speech" Makes Up for 2010 Drought

Despite this article going to press before the 2011 Academy Awards, bets are on that cards containing the title "The King's Speech" are currently being slipped into those multiple PricewaterhouseCooper envelopes. Before "The King's Speech" released in January, it would have been an easy guess that this year's Oscars would go for the hip and brilliant "The Social Network" for Best Picture. Yet just when the thought cloud rises that Oscar will be generous toward rewarding something innovative, they ultimately pull back and decide to reward the more traditional movie that could have easily won fifty years ago.

Nine times out of ten, such a movie is a British production that often takes traditional storytelling to interesting places.

Why this is isn't necessarily due to an internal dispute between aging Academy members and younger ones--or even who's British and who isn't.

Certainly other award shows may have that internal union disparity; particularly the Grammy Awards. Even today, there's still a tug-of-war there over more substantial artists versus the plethora of manufactured artists. It's all enough to picture aging NARAS members screaming at Justin Bieber to get off their lawn.

AMPAS members, however, usually seem in concert with one another on who wins Oscars each year. If a movie with a more traditional bent wins, it seems to instigate mixed opinion as a cop out and sending some kind of mass message not made clear. What is it, though, about the British and their use of traditional storytelling that ultimately sways the Academy to give them awards?

While the British are the true basis of innovation in storytelling, they've long known how to take a traditional form and make it seem refreshing and refined through their own brand. When British actors started winning Oscars for the first time in the early 1930's, the roles they won for were usually playing past British royals as well as stories endemic to Britain itself. The earliest winners were also only males during most of the 30's for reasons that seem calculated. Think Charles Laughton winning for too convincingly playing famished Henry VIII in "The Private Life of Henry the VIII."

It was 1939 when the first British actress won, ironically for a movie about the Old U.S. South. Vivien Leigh still seems to fit the role of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" perfectly, despite so many other American actresses who could have made the southern accent more authentic. It was the first time the British had come to America to convincingly play an American character without anybody caring that the southern accent was still a little bit British.

In later years, the British would perfect our American accent so nobody could tell the difference.

Vivien Leigh's win, however, didn't stop the more traditional British fare from winning over the Academy, particularly in the very British "Goodbye Mr. Chips" that same year with Robert Donat winning for Best Actor. And it was Shakespeare that ultimately won the first British movie for Best Picture at the Oscars in 1948. Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" seemed to set the pattern for a long Best Picture dominance.

That didn't happen until the early 1980's.

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Oddly, when you think of other British actors winning for starring in American movies, it turns up actors who many might not think of as British. Ray Milland and Olivia DeHavilland seem as American as red, white and blue, yet were born in Britain and part of the British actor Oscar pantheon. Milland won for "The Lost Weekend" and Olivia DeHavilland won twice for "To Each His Own" in 1946--then "The Heiress" in 1949. But after Vivien Leigh's second Oscar win for "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1951, it wasn't until the 60's when the British actress won again for playing a character in a movie that wasn't traditional drama.

Julie Andrews proved that you don't have to be in a Shakespeare adaptation or British drawing room drama to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Her win for "Mary Poppins" in 1965 might have seemed ridiculous (as she said in her acceptance speech), yet it was the only decade when the Oscars awarded an unusual role for an appealing actress too hard to ignore.

Conversely, the British male actor was still winning Oscars for more dramatic British fare. This still includes Rex Harrison for "My Fair Lady" in 1964, despite the traditional British tale of lost love being reflected in sing-talk musical form. By 1977, though, we had a daring actor (Peter Finch) winning for playing an American news anchor who ultimately turns into a very current Glenn Beckian TV talk show host. Finch won posthumously for "Network", which was the last truly daring movie a British actor would win for until the 1990's and 2000's.

The early 1980's signaled a floodgate renaissance in the British winning more Oscars than ever before. It also kicked off a new tradition of the epic drama told in an old-fashioned style during a time when filmmaking was becoming more daring. The first of these was the Best Picture success of "Chariots of Fire" in 1981, followed a year later by the explosion of "Gandhi" and the British ultimately counting out ten Oscars. That even soared to a (so far) record eleven British Oscars in 1986, outside of no actors or Best Picture in said year.

Ever since then, the British have flourished most years, with some wins (e.g. "Slumdog Millionaire") having debate whether they're really a true British production. Most of those British wins are told in ways that unabashedly play up excellent production values and scripts over cutting-edge ways to approach the narrative.

It's these aspects that may intoxicate Oscar voters over creative script structures easily bordering on the obvious or pretentious. Despite "The Social Network" having one of the year's best scripts, the non-linear structure may have been seen by some as created merely for the sake of standing apart. "The King's Speech" focuses squarely on the dialogue, the acting chemistry of Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter, the historical ambiance, plus being comfortable in its own skin telling an inspiring tale in linear form.

Of course, this may be sending an inside message from Academy members that dialogue is ultimately more important than the structure or subject of the story. It also may be saying that Academy members know far too few scripts with intelligent and witty dialogue are being written in America, let alone one that makes audiences feel good. Whether it's by DNA or due to a well-trained cottage industry, British screenwriters know how to create dialogue that still makes their movies feel more substantive than anything else out there.

It's true that there was a British Oscar lull in 2010. Nevertheless, it's merely a part of the natural ups and downs that even America experiences at the Academy Awards. As it was during every other British Oscar bonanza, the British winning big again is going to tell us in irony that speech truly is king.

Reference and Resource:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/mar/08/british-oscar-winners