Passion for Ideas at Foreign-Film Symposium, Lunch : Movies: Moderator decries the mediocrity, excesses of most entries despite quality of Oscar nominees.

This year’s Oscar nominees for best foreign language film represent the strongest array of worthy contenders within memory. Yet, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual symposium Saturday at academy headquarters in Beverly Hills, moderator George Schaefer stated surprisingly that beyond a half-dozen or so top contenders among this year’s 35 submissions, the rest were “quite disappointing.”

Film director Schaefer decried a “proliferation of movies with violence, with sex carried to ludicrous extremes, even to pornographic excess. This was the year of the bathroom, the obligatory vomit scene.” Schaefer’s blunt opening remarks were in stark contrast to his usual observations stressing what a tough task it was for the academy to nominate five films from an embarrassment of riches.

Later, at lunch at Le Dome, where members of the academy’s directors branch honored Spain’s Fernando Trueba (“Belle Epoque”), China’s Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine”), Wales’ Paul Turner (“Hedd Wyn,” a beautiful anti-war film not yet released in the United States), Vietnam’s--and France’s--Tran Anh Hung (“The Scent of Green Papaya”) and Taiwan’s Ang Lee (“The Wedding Banquet”), Schaefer asked his fellow directors why so many other foreign films fell so short of the nominated group.

Academy foreign language committee chair Fay Kanin spoke of the problem of getting countries to submit their very best films rather than those that were the most commercial, which in turn led to a long consideration of how tough it is to get movies made and then seen, anywhere, everywhere.

While the luncheon, always genial and amusing, has always been more sedate than the symposium, this year the reverse was true. Admittedly, Trueba, fluent in English, as are all the foreign directors except Tran, did get off a sharp retort during the symposium when someone from the audience asked if he were concerned about losing his integrity in making his American film debut in Miami with an adaptation of a Donald Westlake novel. “Like virginity, I think the best thing to do with integrity is to lose it as quickly as possible,” quipped Trueba--”like Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder did,” citing foreign directors who made dazzling careers in Hollywood.

Indeed, Trueba ended up with none other than Billy Wilder, who admired “Belle Epoque,” a mischievous period romantic comedy, as his luncheon partner. As Hollywood’s puckish senior statesman, Wilder can always be counted upon to come with a quip--”You should get Lorena Bobbitt to cut up your Oscar in five parts so you could all be winners”--but he was also more serious than usual, especially in regard to the challenges facing foreign film industries in making their mark both on home ground and across the world. He spoke of his friend Volker Schlondorff, the eminent German director, who has taken over the Babelsburg studios outside Potsdam--formerly East Germany’s DEFA and before that, the legendary UFA where the pre-Nazi masterpieces of Lang and Pabst were made.

“Actually, Babelsburg is owned now by the French--they probably will turn it into a St. Tropez,” said Wilder. “Babelsburg can’t hope to outspend us, out special-effects us. They are going to have to make pictures that are German. If people in Germany start seeing pictures with ideas they may be successful. You need patience--and enough money to subsidize the next picture. The language thing is very difficult, but you can overcome it with a great idea. There’s only one Schwarzenegger--thank God!--but why don’t they get their lantsman to come back and make a movie?”

As always, the Hollywood directors expressed envy over the virtually total control enjoyed by their foreign colleagues but not necessarily their modest budgets and meager salaries--Tran, for example, earned only $40,000 for making “The Scent of Green Papaya,” his evocation of a vanished Vietnam. Even Chen, thanks to his Hong Kong producer who expressed her confidence in him by refusing to see any of “Farewell My Concubine” until its premiere, enjoyed total autonomy of his $4-million historical epic.

Chen, who thinks conditions in China are worse and more unpredictable than ever, believes that the reason that the Oscars this year will not be seen in China is because his film was nominated. Nevertheless, he hopes that his next picture will be--”Madame Mao.”

As the evils of economics and know-nothing studio heads were bandied about, it was left to Paul Mazursky to sum up quietly the luncheon’s lively discussion. “As romantic as it sounds, I think the obligation is still ours. If we’re not willing to fight for ideas and to take less money, too bad. We can’t lose our passion for ideas.”