Calendar’s Big Oscars Issue : Robert Wise, the Jury : A filmmaker and past academy president who’s really entitled to say ‘It’s No “Citizen Kane” ’ assesses the best picture crop--plus his favorites

Who could be better qualified to assess the Oscar contenders for best picture than a director and producer whose career has spanned most of the modern era of filmmaking?

Robert Wise picked up his first Oscar nomination more than a half-century ago, when his editing of the 1941 “Citizen Kane” was recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Wise, who entered the movie business in 1933 as an assistant editor at RKO, directed his first film, “The Curse of the Cat People,” in 1944, and his 39th, “Rooftops,” in 1989. His films, including “West Side Story” (1961) and “The Sound of Music” (1965), have won a total of 19 Oscars and 67 nominations.

In an era when many directors find themselves typecast--a predicament Steven Spielberg was in until “Schindler’s List”--Wise can boast a tremendous number of genres to his credit. Among his other movies are “The Set-Up” (1949), considered one of the best boxing films ever made; “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951); “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (1956); “I Want to Live” (1958); “The Haunting” (1963); “The Sand Pebbles” (1966) and “The Andromeda Strain” (1971).

Still active at 79, Wise hopes to make another film in Europe this summer. Pleading superstition, he declines to offer any details.

During an interview at his Beverly Hills office, Wise, who served as president of the academy from August 1985 until August 1988, said he is “generally happy” with the current state of filmmaking and cheered by the success of a number of films aimed at adult audiences. He is also gratified by the way the academy has selected its best picture nominees. “We don’t vote on what’s the biggest picture budgetwise, or what is the biggest grosser,” he said.

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Question: Starting in alphabetical order, what was your reaction to “The Fugitive”?

Answer: I thought it was very well done, an excellent film. I was not aware of the director (Andrew Davis, who made 1992’s “Under Siege”). I’m not a big action-picture guy. But that train wreck in the beginning was an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, and he kept up the cinematic style and the marvelous photography and the tension and the energy in it wonderfully well.

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Q: Yet Davis was not nominated for best director. Doesn’t it seem odd when the film is nominated but the director is overlooked?

A: It’s very rare when that happens. I had a similar thing years ago with “The Sand Pebbles,” a film I did with Steve McQueen. I was nominated as producer for best picture, but I was not nominated for director. You’re dealing with two different bodies. You’ve got the directors’ branch (which chooses the nominees for best director), and then you have the whole academy voting on best picture nominations.

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Q: Should we infer from Robert Altman’s nomination for best director that if the directors had made the best picture nominations, “Short Cuts” would have been included?

A: Yes, most directors would tie them together (best picture and best director).

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Q: Does the fact that “The Fugitive” was based on a TV series diminish its value?

A: I went in expecting not to like it too much because I sort of regretted that we were at such a point where we had to go back and resurrect material from another medium in order to make our films. But I guess if it’s good material and it’s excellently treated then it’ll stand on its own. So much to my surprise, I found myself quite caught up and carried along with the film. There’s more of those being done now, aren’t there (including “Maverick,” which Warner Bros. plans to release May 20). I guess I’m prejudiced; we should come up with new material.

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Q: What about “In the Name of the Father,” which opened in limited release late in the year and was perhaps not as well known to academy members?

A: I’m so pleased that it did take off because it came into the game very, very late. I thought it was beautifully done, beautifully acted. The shadings of it were just excellent, the ups and downs, the turns and twists. I think particularly the handling of the lead character (played by Daniel Day-Lewis, nominated as best actor). He’s had such contrasts all throughout his career, from “My Beautiful Laundrette” all the way to “A Room With a View”--I think they were almost back to back (in 1985), and you couldn’t recognize him from one to the other. “The Age of Innocence” couldn’t be more of a contrast to what he was playing in this. That certainly shows the tremendous range of his talent.

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Q: Some people thought Day-Lewis might get nominated for “The Age of Innocence,” but he didn’t. Is it possible to compare the two performances?

A: I thought his performance in “The Age of Innocence” was much more subdued. I didn’t feel--and this is something that is certainly not an actor’s fault--but I didn’t feel the chemistry between Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer as strongly as some of the scenes would seem to call for. There are personal chemistries that happen between actors and actresses. Usually people who do those roles don’t test (for them). Maybe they meet beforehand and they talk to one another, but you never really know what the chemistry between actors, especially a man and woman, is going to be until you’ve got them up on the screen.

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Q: People admired “The Age of Innocence,” but somehow did not feel passionate about it. Is that one of the reasons it didn’t get nominated?

A: It could have been. Marty (director Martin Scorsese) did a fine job in re-creating the period. I think (the absence of chemistry between the stars) might have resulted in a less warm reception by the academy. I’ve also heard that people thought it was a little too studied, with too much emphasis on the detail of the period and the lifestyle.

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Q: Getting back to “In the Name of the Father,” were you surprised that Emma Thompson got a supporting actress nomination?

A: I was surprised. She’s a fine actress and I think she handled the role well, but it was a very small and not overly colorful role.

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Q: Does the fact that Thompson and Holly Hunter both got nominated in two different categories say something about the paucity of top actresses?

A: (People in the industry) keep talking about getting roles in which a woman can carry a picture, but they don’t seem to be coming along. I remember years and years back when Box Office magazine used to list every year the 10 leading box-office stars in the world, and they were usually all American, and it was not uncommon to have six men and four women as the top box-office draws. That whole ability for a woman to carry a picture is gone--because of such an emphasis over the years on these action pictures.

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Q: Speaking of strong women’s roles, let’s move on to “The Piano.”

A: I loved Jane Campion’s idea and her script. The period it was set in, and the characters, and the interplay and the plot. I thought it was so refreshing and new and different. I applaud her very much for that, as well as for her direction of the film, which I thought was just fine.

But I was at a dinner party the other night, and there were a couple of women--people in the business--who didn’t like the picture at all. They thought it was so phony. I was so shocked and so surprised. My wife and I had been so caught up in it.

If I had any questions, I guess I might have questioned why Sam Neill would get himself into this kind of relationship, knowing that she was mute.

The little girl (Oscar nominee Anna Paquin, who plays Holly Hunter’s daughter) was absolutely a knockout. Harvey Keitel was just excellent, too--such a change of pace for him. And to turn out to be that sympathetic in the end. When he first came on, I thought, “How’s this going to work?”

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Q: But Keitel was not nominated.

A: He had an awful lot of competition. It’s always difficult when you get down to making those nominations. I was just looking back over the list I made (before the nominations), and for best picture I had 11 films. Most of us make a list of maybe the top 10 or 12 or 15. Then it’s the winnowing down of that to five--it’s tough. You try to replay them in your mind. I think any five of those 11 I had there I would have been satisfied with.

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Q: Of the five nominated pictures, “The Piano” is the only one with an erotic love scene.

A: I don’t recall any movie being nominated that had that degree of nudity that we had in “The Piano,” which I think is a step forward, too, in terms of the assessment by the academy.

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Q: “The Remains of the Day” is of course the only other best picture nominee containing a love story of sorts. What did you think of that picture?

A: Once again a very unusual story--maybe not quite the originality of “The Piano”--and the sexiest film I’ve seen, in a way, without having any sex in it. And that scene with the book (when the housekeeper played by Emma Thompson and the butler portrayed by Anthony Hopkins gently wrestle over a romance novel he is reading but refrain from actually making physical contact)--that’s a very, very sexy scene.

Of course, I’m such a fan of Tony’s (whom Wise directed in the 1977 “Audrey Rose”). He has such a range. I thought the chemistry (in both this picture and last year’s Oscar-nominated “Howards End”) was marvelous between Tony and Emma Thompson. They really mesh.

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Q: And--last, but of course not least--”Schindler’s List”?

A: I was so pleased for Steven that it came off so well. So many people have been wondering if he could make anything besides those wonderfully done entertainment pieces and take a serious subject matter and do a top job. I thought he did an outstanding job. The way he chose to shoot it, in black and white, to make it feel much more realistic and almost like shooting a newsreel--he kept a sense of textured reality almost with a grain on it.

If Steven had done it in color he certainly would have chosen a very, very subdued color. We don’t see the real world in as strong colors as we see on film. Sometimes in my films, I have to try to desaturate the color a little bit, to take a little of the Technicolor look out of it--because that is not real life, either. I think the locations were outstanding, the care and attention taken with the sets and locations and the customs of the period.

Some people objected to the color at the end, but it seemed right to me. If he’d been actually shooting during the period (of the Holocaust) he’d have been shooting in black and white. What he was saying (with the use of color to show the surviving Schindler Jews) was this is the modern day.

Steven and his associates made very fine choices in the actors for all the roles. I kept being impressed constantly by the look of the people in the crowds. They were obviously very carefully selected.

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Q: What about the film’s length?

A: The length didn’t bother me. I was caught up in it from the beginning, and it held me all the way through. Pace is really interesting. If you can hook an audience in at the beginning and keep that hook in, you can go for a long, long time.

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Q: “Short Cuts” was obviously a favorite of the directors’ branch. Why do you think it did not get a best picture nomination?

A: I thought it was a damn fine picture and very unusual. But it’s a long film, once again, and kind of a downer. That might have worked against it. (The absence of characters you could identify with) might have militated against it.

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Q: I assume “Short Cuts” made your list of the 11 top films of the year. What else was on that list?

A: “In the Line of Fire”--I thought it was right up there with “The Fugitive.” I would be hard put to make a choice between the two of them. Another film I liked--that a lot of people haven’t felt that strongly about--was “Philadelphia.” It’s the first major movie to deal head-on with AIDS, and I had no objection to the script and the development of the story and the characters. Also, “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Shadowlands” and “The Age of Innocence.”

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Q: Would you care to divulge how you voted?

A: No way. That’s a criminal offense around the academy.