COUNTDOWN TO OSCAR : Foreign Directors Share a Lively Feast

If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Foreign Language Film Award Nominees Symposium, held Saturday morning at academy headquarters, was the dullest within memory, its luncheon afterwards in honor of the directors of the nominated foreign films was one of its liveliest.

Directors Irvin Kershner, Norman Jewison, Billy Wilder, Gilbert Cates, Delbert Mann, Franklin Schaffner, George Sidney, the Soviet Union’s Elem Klimov, Robert Ellis Miller, Ronald Neame, Arthur Hiller, Richard Brooks, Brazil’s Nelson Pereira dos Santos and host George Schaefer gathered at Le Dome Restaurant to extend a warm welcome to France’s Louis Malle (“Au Revoir, Les Enfants”), Denmark’s Gabriel Axel (“Babette’s Feast”), Spain’s Jose Luis Garci (“Course Completed”) and Norway’s Nils Gaup (“Pathfinder”).

Absent was Italy’s Ettore Scola (“The Family”), who is currently filming; he was represented at the symposium by production executive Attilio D’Onofrio. Also participating in the symposium was Sweden’s Lasse Hallstrom, whose “My Life as a Dog” received nominations for best director and best screenplay based on material from another medium.

Malle’s autobiographical film about a tragic incident in his youth during World War II, Axel’s witty, subtle adaptation of an Isak Dinesen story, and Scola’s reminiscence about 80 years in the life of an Italian family have already opened to much praise.

The symposium commenced with clips from all five nominated films, offering glimpses of Gaup’s “Pathfinder,” a legend about a young Lapp boy’s fight to save his people from ruthless invaders, and Garci’s “Course Completed,” a drama about a famous playwright in mid-life crisis. Gaup said his film is slated to open in America in September, but Garci, a three-time nominee whose 1982 “To Begin Again” was the first Spanish picture to win a best foreign language film Oscar, revealed he has yet to find a distributor for “Course Completed.”

Malle, from his perspective as a French director who spent a decade in American films before returning home to make “Au Revoir, Les Enfants,” was able to make some revealing comparisons between working in the United States and in France.

“I tried to work the same way, and the best work I did here was done with a small crew,” Malle said. “It’s very hard to work here for little money. It took six months to raise $400,000 for ‘My Dinner with Andre,’ but in five minutes you can get $40 million for projects I don’t think I can understand.

“When I’ve been in trouble it’s been purely a question of control. I’ve had very good American crews, but on my first American picture, ‘Pretty Baby,’ I had trouble with the gaffer. He was always setting back lights when Sven Nyqvist, my cinematographer, didn’t want them. But I couldn’t fire him--for political reasons.

“The point is, you want to work with people who are with you. American crews take for granted that you don’t know what you want, but I come from Europe, where film is regarded as a director’s medium.”

At lunch Schaefer offered a toast to the memories of George Cukor, the event’s founder; Rouben Mamoulian, who succeeded Cukor as its host; and John Huston. The conversation, sparked by Wilder’s irreverent wit, ranged from Oscar anecdotes, to colorization and subtitling and many of the problems that directors everywhere face. Getting serious for a moment, Wilder said that--more than by colorization--he was offended by the cutting of his films to fit TV time slots. “They hire Ralph’s bag boy rejects to do the job,” he said.

Neame pointed out the need for regular inspection of theaters to ensure the correct presentation of films.

Asked about his next project, Axel expressed his long-held desire to film “The Legend of Amlet,” a key source for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” “It will have very little dialogue, good action and a happy ending,” assured Axel.

“I defy you to sell that story to (producer) Ray Stark,” quipped Wilder, who couldn’t resist speculating what Barbra Streisand might be like as Amlet.

At the end of the meal, Norman Jewison, who arrived at the table late, offered another toast to Cukor and Mamoulian, adding King Vidor and William Wyler. As he was leaving Jewison said: “I miss them so much. I loved seeing them at these lunches. I expected them always to be here, maybe because I was young when I first met them. They meant everything to me.”