Early on it seemed as though Nashville would be invincible in the 1975 Oscar race.

Right off the bat it tied with Barry Lyndon as co-winner of the National Board of Review award, then went on to win the National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics awards all by its lonesome. The directors of Nashville and Barry Lyndon, Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick, respectively, tied as Best Director at the National Board of Review while Altman won both critics’ group awards on his own.

Things began to move in another direction when the Los Angeles Film Critics gave their initial award in a tie to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dog Day Afternoon. They singled out Dog Day Afternoon’s director, Sidney Lumet for recognition over Cuckoo Nest’s Milos Forman.

All four films and their directors, as well as Jaws and its director, Steven Spielberg, were nominated for Golden Globes with Cuckoo’s Nest and Forman emerging triumphant.

The Directors Guild followed suit and named the same directors, Altman, Forman, Kubrick, Lumet and Spielberg, giving their award to Forman.

By this time it seemed a foregone conclusion that Cuckoo’s Nest had usurped Nashville as the one to beat for the Oscar. Oscar seemed to comply when the nominations were announced. Cuckoo’s Nest had garnered nine nominations, followed by Barry Lyndon with seven; Dog Day Afternoon with six; Nashville with five and Jaws with four. The big surprise was Federico Fellini’s nomination for Best Director for Amarcord over Spielberg.

When the awards were announced, Cuckoo’s Nest, to no one’s surprise walked away with five awards including those for Best Picture; Actor (Jack Nicholson); Actress (Louise Fletcher) and Director. Nashville went home with just one award, for Best Song (Keith Carradine’s “I’m Easy”).

Amarcord, which had won the Best Foreign Language Film award the year before, would almost certainly have been the sixth nominee, but what would the other four have been had Oscar nominated ten?

With four nominations and one win (Best Supporting Actress, Lee Grant), Hal Ashby’s Shampoo would also have been an easy call.

With four nominations and no wins, John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King might well have been the eighth nominee, while Sydney Pollack’s popular 3 Days of the Condor, despite having only one other nomination, would be a strong candidate for the ninth slot.

I’ll give the last slot to John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust which already has two other nominations.