BOOKS

Marina Vuletić, Oscar Between tradition and progress: 1927-1997

A review of the book on the history of American Academy Awards written by a young writer Marina Vuletić.

Basically a compilation work, the book is conceived as a reference, filled with information about films, authors, award winners and nominees. The historical overview is ordered by decades (e. g. First Decade — Golden Age; Fifth Decade — New Hollywood), and each year is separately dealt with within the respective decade. Each year block contains a basic text on the year’s nominees, supplied with numerous facts and quotations. The introduction of the book is vividly written by the filmologist Ante Peterlić, and it is followed by an informative and condensed exposition — an overview of the seventy years of Academy Award — written by the author.

The book is supplied with exhaustive index of all nominated films and personalities, with specifically marked award winners. The book is well-conceived and graphically well-designed, usable and useful, though at a closer look it reveals a number of factualistic, stylistic, and interpretation failures (which are pointed out and analyzed by the reviewer). Most of them can be ascribed to the obvious encyclopedic inexperience of the author, and the gaps in her (and the editor’s) general cinematic knowledge.

Damir Radić