The Oft-Neglected Oscar: Production Design

The Oscars are this Sunday, and the hype leading up to this rite of late winter is as intense as ever. But – surprise! – I am most keen on an oft-neglected award category: Production Design.

In my opinion, production design can make or break a film, particularly for period pieces. It’s as important as the script, the director, the actors, etc.

In fact, I have to see movies twice because on first viewing, I’m concentrating so hard on whether the interiors are historically correct that I totally miss the storyline and performances. I guess it’s a curse of being such a fan of historical design.

I will confess up front I have not seen some of the five films nominated this year for Production Design Academy Awards – American Hustle, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, Her, and Twelve Years a Slave.

So instead I’m going to focus on my favorite interiors of movies past, some of which were nominated or won Oscars.

1) Restoration, the 1995 film that won the Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (this category is now called Production Design), is my favorite. Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Sam Neil and Meg Ryan, this film not only has magnificent English Baroque sets, it covers a time and place in history not often depicted on the silver screen – when Charles II returns to his throne in England in 1660.

2) Jefferson in Paris, also released in 1995, follows Thomas Jefferson’s stint as ambassador to the Royal Court in France, during the reign of Louis XVI. The interiors of this Neoclassical period moved away from the opulent and grand spaces of Louis XIV and more toward intimate rooms. The movie starred Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi and Gwyneth Paltrow and was not nominated for any Academy Awards.

3) Chéri, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates, was not particularly well received by audiences or critics, but has contrasting lush interiors that I adore. In the 2009 film, Pfeiffer and Bates both play French courtesans during the Belle Époque period (1880s to early 1900s). What’s interesting from a design perspective is that the Bates character inhabits a traditional Belle Époque interior, while the younger Pfeiffer character languishes in a more modern Art Nouveau environment. The contrast is a design lover’s dream.

4) Nothing turns me on more than creepy elements in design, and you can’t get much creepier than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The film won three Academy Awards and was nominated for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration. The 1992 erotic horror movie was directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola and featured an all-star cast including Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins. The interiors are so dark and Victorian they are downright delicious.

5) I confess I go nuts over Art Deco, particularly the 1920s Zig Zag Moderne era. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) features stylish 1920s Art Deco, which I love for its sumptuousness of the materials of the period – luxe fabrics, lacquering, metals and so on. I also get weak in the knees for the architectural and furniture forms of that era. And who wouldn’t fall for the way designers melded historical design into a stylization of form – Native American motifs became chevron forms, ancient Egyptian design was morphed into stylized sunbursts and papyrus and lotus forms, ancient Babylonian ziggurats and ancient Mayan temples because inspiration for the zigzag forms. And added to the mix were fabulous aerodynamic forms, greyhounds, cheetahs, zeppelins, and ocean liners. Miss Pettigrew, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams, was a popular and well-reviewed film, but received virtually no award nominations. But oh – those Art Deco interiors are sublime!

Eleanor Schrader is an award-winning architectural and interior design historian, professor and consultant who lectures worldwide on the history of architecture, interiors, furniture, and decorative arts. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.