Best Picture: 1984

[Big Magilla]

Gladys Cooper could play haughty to a faretheewell, but she could also play compassionate characters with all the required nuances. In The Song of Bernadette and Love Letters she does both.

[Penelope]

Gladys Cooper was robbed of the Oscar for Now, Voyager (1942).

Gladys Cooper was an amazing actress; have you seen her brief but hauntingly powerful turn in Forever and a Day (1943)? She's also terrific in Love Letters (1945).

[Reza]

No doubt Gladys Cooper might have also made a good Mrs Moore especially having played the part to a Tony nomination on Broadway. However, she had a very strong imperious and haughty persona which was all wrong for the compassionate character of Mrs Moore. Peggy Ashcroft easily captured that part of the character without seeming to act because her own natural self came out on screen.

Gladys Cooper was robbed of the Oscar for Now, Voyager (1942).

[Big Magilla]

Peggy Ashcroft was equally luminous as the disillusioned missionary in the TV mini-series The Jewel in the Crowd filmed around the same time as A Pasage to India. Still, I think Gladys Cooper would have been equally luminous as Mrs. Moore, having already proven her ability in her Tony nominated performance in the Broadway version.

[flipp525]

I couldn't agree more, Reza. A Passage to India is a perfect adaptation of one of Forster's best works. This stands alongside Howard's End as the best of Forster brought to the screen.

Peggy Ashcroft is absolutely luminous as Mrs. Moore. I don't even want to picture Hepburn, Dench or anyone else in the role. What a completely well-deserved Oscar win.

[Reza]

I've always been a sucker for David Lean's films and A Passge to India is one of my two favorites, the other being Summertime.

I've often wondered what the film might have been like had it been made twenty years earlier with Gladys Cooper who won a Tony nomiantion for playing Mrs. Moore on stage, or today with Judi Dench in the role. Perhaps neither would be as good as Peggy Ashcroft, but both would be preferable to Lean's Summertime star Katharine Hepburn who had the good sense to turn the part down.

It is an absolutely superb adaptation of Forster's book. Peggy Ashcroft is a marvel as Mrs Moore. Neither Gladys Cooper nor Judi Dench could have done justice to the part. Ashcroft perfectly captured the subtle nuances of the character exactly as Forster envisioned in the book. Even Judy Davis, who is usually so brittle, is marvelously subdued and captured the quality of Adela Quested. I think Lean gets full credit in toning her performance down - they had big battles on the set.

The only thing that mars this, otherwise, perfect film is the character of Godbole as played by a terribly miscast Alec Guinness. He comes off as one of those ''Peter Sellers type'' Indian impersonations that were so popular during the 1960s. Another great thing about the film was that despite Lean at the helm he managed to make a small intimate film even though he was dealing with such a grand canvas in terms of storytelling- harking back to the kind of films he made during the 1940s.

What a pity the film and Lean did not win as well.

[Big Magilla]

I've always been a sucker for David Lean's films and A Passge to India is one of my two favorites, the other being Summertime.

I've often wondered what the film might have been like had it been made twenty years earlier with Gladys Cooper who won a Tony nomiantion for playing Mrs. Moore on stage, or today with Judi Dench in the role. Perhaps neither would be as good as Peggy Ashcroft, but both would be preferable to Lean's Summertime star Katharine Hepburn who had the good sense to turn the part down.

[kaytodd]

It might not be the "best" of those four films, but the film I would choose to watch tonight would be Places In The Heart (I might have been the one who picked it). I loved that film. Outstanding performances all around and the ending in the church moved me almost to tears the first time I saw it. I rooted for Sally Fields' character and her family big time. Amadeus might have been a better choice for BP (Forman made a lot of good decisions in how he decided to open up the play for the screen) and The Killing Fields is a film that will be discussed for decades to come (quite an achievement for a first time director). But I did not love either of those films as much as I did Places In The Heart.

But, looking back on 1984, the best film may have been The Terminator. Seriously.

[Reza]

A Passage to India by a long shot!

[Hustler]

A Passage to India and The Killing Fields are equally remarkable. I´m going with Lean.

[Mister Tee]

1984/85 was the nadir of a dreary decade; none of these nominees was anything like a commercial smash, but there was nothing much else to nominate.

I'm open to watching A Passage to India again, but at the time I thought the critical re-embrace of Lean seemed excessive, perhaps meant to apologize for their trashing of him a decade or so earlier. Amadeus was beautiful to look at, but I thought the the last 45 minutes were a deadly bore. Places in the Heart was an oddity -- a really flimsy script with occasional grace-notes (and an unexpected ending), all directed better than the material deserved. A Soldier's Story I thought was a decent-enough play, but on screen it seemed aimed for maximum cloy by Jewison.

Which leaves The Killing Fields, a film with all sorts of flaws, but the most stirring of the bunch. The film's middle segment -- the Khmer Rouge takeover, the evacuation of the embassy -- is the best chunk of any film I saw that year. And the ending is pretty hard to resist. So, it gets my vote.

[rudeboy]

Amadeus isn't quite a great movie, but it's head and shoulders above every other best picture winner in the 80s.

[dws1982]

Amadeus.

Looking at these Best Picture lineups, it's easy to see why everyone calls the 80's such a bad decade.

[Sabin]

Is this the dullest lineup ever? The Academy deserved a lecture and it may as well have come from Eddie Murphy.

Haven't seen 'A Passage to India'. It can probably only be better than 'The Killing Fields' or 'Amadeus'. I guess I choose 'The Killing Fields', anonymously directed just shy of bombast but hugely emotional.