They only got Best Picture right once, anyways.
They might want to reconsider the Best Picture versus Best Director Oscar too. History has shown it has very often been difficult to disentangle the two.
Auteur alert!
In L’Abruzzo e il cinema, Leone notes with frustration that “I just wanted to be his consultant on the basis of the experience I had accumulated in cinema over many years” but that “only in editing did Tonino become more accepting”. Leone further refers to himself as “a producer of the old Hollywood style”; the implied creative responsibility is still reflected in the bestowal of the Academy Award for Best Picture to the producer rather than the director. This contrasts with the European practice, best epitomised by the Palme d’or at Cannes, where the honour is awarded to the director in accordance with the notion, introduced in Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s, of the director as the “auteur” (author) of the film. It is fitting that a film shot in two parts across the United States and Europe, based on a thematic contrast between the American and Italian, or more broadly European, take on the Western, should have its ultimate accreditation similarly divided. Tonino Valerii was undoubtedly the director of this European (Italo-Franco-German) production, but Sergio Leone, in his classical American approach to production, was its auteur.
