This is interesting, and it's actually a dilemma that most countries face when choosing "their" movie for the Oscars. And it actually should be as you said - the best movie, or let's say the movie which is generally considered to be the best, should be selected. Yet I kind of understand when a more suitable - or thought to be more suitable - movie is chosen instead, because let's face it (and we are all sort-of experts here), the Academy, while unpredictable, has its own tastes, which aren't necessarily "very American" but are certainly peculiar. And it's the Academy which proclaims the winner.Precious Doll wrote: it's better to nominate the best film your country has to offer then a lesser work (i.e. The Past & by everything I've read Renoir) even if it means no nomination.
Today Marco Giusti, a movie critic famous here because he also has its own tv show, has written a piece where he predicts that, if chosen, The Great Beauty has no chances of winning the Oscar (he's optimistic enough to say that "it could MAYBE be nominated"), and that at least two of the seven finalists (Honey and I Travel By Myself) would be better candidates. He knows that Sorrentino's movie is by far the best made in Italy this year - but he also knows that this doesnt mean that the Academy will understand it.
A few years ago Italy could have chosen I Am Love, a movie which had been more or less ignored here (by both critics and people) but had been well-received in the US and, if submitted, could have easily been nominated for Best Foreign Film. They preferred to send a movie which I personally wasn't enthusiastic about, but which had been popular here - and which, needless to say, the Acadeny didn't want to have anything to do with.
So it's not easy, really. But I can't deny that this year NOT sending The Great Beauty would be unthinkable - it's so obviously superior to the others (it is, by the way, much, much better than the same director's misguided American effort). But we all know that it will be a losing move, which is a bit masochistic (but then Italians are a bit masochistic by nature, so it probably makes sense).
