AP

Even phenomenal popularity may not help you get this.

I DIDN'T watch the Oscars this year.

Not that I am one of those devoted fans who takes up early residence on the couch, popcorn in hand, and sits goggle-eyed through the marathon annual telecast, soaking in every detail of the presenters' dresses, laughing at each of the MC's feeble jokes and suffering through list after mind-numbing list of thanks from tearful winners. I have friends who don't like to miss even the Oscars for lighting or make-up, who rate the designer gowns out of which assorted starlets appear about to pop, and who weep at the ritual tribute to those stars of the silver screen who have gone to meet their Maker since the last Oscar ceremonies. My own style is to sit with a stack of newspapers and magazines, skimming them with the TV in the background, and looking up periodically when an award is just about to be announced. This year, with its blindingly predictable (and widely predicted) results in all the major categories, I didn't even bother to do that.

But whoever picks up the heavy little gold-plated statuettes — which acquired their nickname because they reminded an early columnist, Sidney Skolsky, of his uncle Oscar — there is one constituency they will always leave unsatisfied: the true cinephiles.

For the Oscars have a major distinguishing characteristic — they are more often wrong than right. This is also true of other famous prizes — including the Nobel, which has eluded several worthy luminaries in the various fields in which it is awarded. But movie critics and scholars have no doubt that it is more true of the Academy Awards than of any comparable distinction. For instance, every year for the last two decades, an annual poll of the world's leading cinema experts has listed Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" as the greatest movie of all time. Yet when it appeared, "Citizen Kane" didn't even qualify in the eyes of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the greatest movie of the year 1941. That year's Oscar went to the sentimental "How Green Was My Valley", which few cinema historians today would bother to remember in a footnote.

Other famous omissions are almost as glaring. The man considered by most American cinematographers (and an overwhelming majority of critics) as the finest contemporary director in the industry, Martin Scorsese, hasn't won an Oscar for any of his famous films, which are already classics taught at American film schools: in 1973, his "Mean Streets" lost out to "The Sting", in 1976, "Taxi Driver" was felled by the appalling "Rocky", and in 1980, "Raging Bull" — an intellectual's answer, if you like, to "Rocky" — was defeated by Robert Redford's "Ordinary People".

That might suggest that the Oscars are, after all, the award for ordinary people — that, like the Filmfare awards in India, they recognise popular standards of excellence rather than elite ones. But a survey of past Oscars doesn't even bear out that theory. For the list of major directors who have failed to win Oscars includes not only the revered geniuses Luis Buquel, Francois Truffaut and D.W. Griffith, but also the massively popular Cecil B. DeMille (of "The Ten Commandments" and a host of other cinematic epics), Howard Hawks — and Alfred Hitchcock.

Indeed, phenomenal popularity is clearly no guarantee of an Oscar. Among the actresses not honoured by the Academy were Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, all legendary figures of the screen. Among child stars, Tatum O'Neal picked up an Oscar in 1973, but Shirley Temple never won one (though she was patronisingly presented a miniature Oscar when she was six). Steven Spielberg's "E.T.", easily the biggest hit of its time, lost in almost every category to Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi", leading one sour Hollywoodian to remark, "We were supposed to be handing out Oscars, not the Nobel Peace Prize." (Of course, the real Gandhi didn't actually win the Nobel Peace Prize; the Oscar can scarcely qualify as posthumous consolation.) In 1937, the now-classic "A Star is Born" was nominated for Oscars in the "Best Picture", "Best Actor" and "Best Actress" categories. It didn't win any of them. Today the actual winners are forgotten, but by 1954 "A Star is Born" was successfully remade. This time, Judy Garland's memorable performance didn't win her an Oscar either, but the film is a perennial feature on television re-runs in this country, and a favourite of the movie-nostalgia wallahs. (It was even remade yet again, in a forgettable version starring Barbara Streisand.)

Indeed, an even greater favourite — guaranteed to emerge on American TV screens several times (and on several channels) every Christmas — is the weepily righteous "It's a Wonderful Life", in which an angel persuades James Stewart not to commit suicide by showing him what his town would be like if he had never been born. No film, not even "The Wizard of Oz" or "The Sound of Music", has a greater hold on adult American affections today. I have friends who have seen it a dozen times and still tune in to watch every year, tears running down to irrigate the lumps in their throats. But when "It's a Wonderful Life" was nominated in 1946, it didn't win either for "Best Picture" or "Best Actor"; in fact, it didn't even come close. (The elitists fared no better. Also losing the same year were Laurence Olivier and "Henry V", venerated by many as one of the finest cinematic renditions of a Shakespeare play.)

Of course, an Oscar win is not everyone's idea of the pinnacle of recognition. Many past winners would have preferred to be among the distinguished names ignored by the Academy. George C. Scott, who won the "Best Actor" Oscar for "Patton" in 1970, said he didn't want the award and refused to come to the ceremony. "It's degrading for actors to compete against one another," he declared. (Marlon Brando, who turned down his "Best Actor" Oscar for "The Godfather" two years later, had accepted it in 1954 for "On the Waterfront", and so had it both ways. Bob Hope wisecracked that if Brando won again, he'd send Scott to receive the award on his behalf.) Another winner was even angrier: the immortal George Bernard Shaw, who felt insulted at being awarded the "Best Screenplay" Oscar in 1938 for "Pygmalion".

"It's perfect nonsense," he fumed. "My position as a playwright is known throughout the world. To offer me an award of this sort is an insult, as if they have never heard of me before."

Sadly, for so many of the names announced by the dressily dyslexic stars reading from their TelePrompTers, the Oscars will remain the high point of their careers. In many cases, the problem will prove to be the opposite of Shaw's: verdict that their names may never be heard of again.