I've heard that this film was nominated for 42nd Oscar (best film of 1969 for Best Foreign Language) and also was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 43rd Oscar. How could that happen? I think a movie cant eligible for 2 different years of Oscar. Anyone can explain this for me?
shareI think it's because Best Foreign Films is one category that doesn't need to be released in the US to be nominated. But all the other technical and artistic categories requires the movie to be released in the USA on year previous to the award.
Usually one country chooses a representative movie to try to get a nomination for the oscar. And it can be a movie that was released in that country but no yet in USA. According to IMDb, this movie was released in USA only in 1970. So I think that's why it could get a oscar nomination for Best Foreign for 1969 and a script nomination for 1970.
A similar thing happened with "City of God" from Brazil.
Brazil nominated this film as their representative to get a oscar nomination. But the voter didn't think the movie should be in the final 5. The next year the movie was released in USA, got good critics and became famous, so it got 4 oscar nominations in the next year in some technical categories. But as it wasn't nominated as best foreign movie because Brazil already tried it and couldn't indicate it again as the country's representative.
It happened several times - The Battle of Algiers was, I believe, nominated with a two year gap! These days it couldn't - the rules were changed so that a film submitted for Best Foreign Language Film cannot, whether it was nominated or not, be nominated later in other categories.
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