United Artists (The Bound for Glory Company Production)
Oscar Nominations: 6
Picture, produced by Robert F. Blumofe and Harold Leventhal
Screenplay (Adapted): Robert Getchell
Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
Film Editing: Robert Jones and Pembroke J. Herring
Costume Design: William Theiss
Original Song: Leonard Rosenman
Oscar Awards: 2
Cinematography
Original Song
Oscar Context:
Each of the other 1976 Best Picture nominees was artistically more interesting. Hal Ashby's “Bound for Glory,” made with an eye for the Bicentennial, concerns the life and myth of Woodie Guthrie, the great folk singer and union organizer. Alan Pakula's “All the President's Men,” produced by Robert Redford, was a good political thriller about the Watergate scandal, based on the best seller by the two Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford).
Sidney Lumet made an outrageous farce, “Network,” about the potential power of television, that for some reason many people took as a serious drama. And Martin Scorsese followed up his “Mean Street” with “Taxi Driver,” a film about political and social alienation, embodied by Robert De Niro in a grand performance.
Of the five nominees, however, Rocky's message, the rise to stardom of an obscure “nobody,” which paralleled both the actor's life offscreen and President Jimmy Carter's 1976 election, was the most upbeat and the least controversial. But it was also the most befitting of the nation's mood in its Bicentennial celebrations.
The winner of the Adapted Screenplay Oscar was William Goldman for “All the President's Men,” and the Oscar for Costume Design went to Danilo Donati for “Fellini's Casanova.”
