Peers Pick Louis Malle as the Year’s Best Director : Wins Two Orsons--an Award Named for Orson Welles--for His “Au Revoir Les Enfants”

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci was the chosen one at the recent Oscar show, but he didn’t get a call from the 1,233 international film directors polled for the 1987 Orsons.

The Orsons, named after the late Orson Welles, who would have been 78 today, are voted in seven categories and the big winner this year was France’s Louis Malle.

Malle, whose “Au Revoir Les Enfants” lost out to Gabriel Axel’s “Babette’s Feast” in the foreign-language category of the Academy Awards, won Orsons for both the best directorial achievement of a non-English film and best film maker (defined as a director working from his own script) in the non-English category.

The late John Huston won the Orson for the best directorial achievement in an English language film for “The Dead,” while England’s John Boorman was voted the “Rosebud”--a special Orson--as the best English-language director-writer for “Hope and Glory.” This is the second year of the Orson, an award created by Welles’ protege Henry Jaglom. There is no formal presentation of the awards--indeed, statuettes in the likeness of Welles are still in the design stage, according to Jaglom--but there is no lack of voters, or endorsers.

On the 17-member Orsons panel sit some of the most distinguished directors in the world. Among them: Sydney Pollack, John Schlesinger, Sidney Lumet, Bertrand Tavernier, Fred Zinnemann and Bertolucci.

Eligible voters include anyone who has directed a feature film anywhere in the world.

“The idea was to create awards that are pure directors’ awards,” Jaglom said Thursday, in announcing the ’87 Orsons from New York. “There are about 254 directors voting for Oscars. Very few members of the Directors Guild (of America) are film directors.

“The Orsons are the only awards that are true reflections of what directors think about directors’ work. The Academy Awards are about money. The Orsons are about respect.”

If the Orsons do nothing else, they’ll give Jaglom a great stamp collection. He said ballots came in this year from places he didn’t know had movies--Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Lesotho.

“I’m amazed at how much agreement there was in the voting, considering the (geographic) spread,” Jaglom said. “In most of the categories, the vote wasn’t even close.”

The other 1987 Orson winners included England’s David Leland, whose “Wish You Were Here” won him the award for best first film, English language, and French-Canadian Jean-Claude Lauzon, whose “Un Zoo La Nuit” earned him the best first film award for a non-English film.

Lifetime achievement awards--Hall of Fame Orsons given to those who get more than 50% of the votes cast--go to Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman.