1968 was a year of surprises at the Oscars.

Early on, Paul Newman, who had failed to win any of the four times he was nominated for Best Actor looked like he might finally win as Best Director for Rachel, Rachel. He had won the New York Film Critics Award and the Golden Globe and was a Directors Guild finalist. Alas, it was not to be. Newman was shut out of Oscar’s Best Director nods, replaced in the nominations by Gillo Pontecorvo whose The Battle of Algiers had been a Best Foreign Film nominee two years before. Go figure.

Further surprises ensued, shocks really, when envelopes were opened on Oscar night. For the first time in the twenty years since the Directors Guild began handing out its awards, the DGA and Oscar winner for Best Director differed. The DGA award had gone to Anthony Harvey for The Lion in Winter. The Oscar went to veteran Carol Reed for Oliver!

An even bigger surprise came when Ingrid Bergman opened the envelope for Best Actress and gasped “it’s a tie!” Newcomer Barbra Streisand had to share her win for Funny Girl with veteran Katharine Hepburn, picking up her third award for The Lion in Winter.

The Lion in Winter had won the New York Film Critics Award and Golden Globe and with its seven nominations and was an early favorite to win the Oscar as well, but faced strong challenges from eventual winner Oliver! with eleven nominations and Funny Girl with eight. Less of a threat with four nominations each were Rachel, Rachel and Romeo & Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli’s breathtaking film of Shakespeare’s tragedy filmed for the first time with an age appropriate cast.

The Directors Guild nominees in addition to Harvey, Newman, Zeffirelli and Reed, included William Wyler for Funny Girl; Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey; Roman Polanski for Rosemary’s Baby; Gene Saks for The Odd Couple; Jiri Menzel for Closely Watched Trains, which had won the Best Foreign Film award the year before and the unknown Paul Almond for Isabel, who remained an unknown despite his film’s out-of-nowhere nomination. Harvey, Newman, Reed, Wyler and Kubrick were finalists. Oscar agreed with Harvey, Reed and Kubrick but in addition to replacing Newman with Pontecorvo, they replaced Wyler with Zeffirelli.

We can usually look to Oscar’s and the DGA’s lists of contenders for Best Director to determine likely candidates to fill a ten film Best Picture scenario, but that doesn’t quite work this year. Certainly 2001: A Space Odyssey, which had been nominated for four and won one, and the popular Rosemary’s Baby which had been nominated for two and won one, would have been included. Beyond that it gets tricky.

The Odd Couple is a possibility, but there was little chance that they would have nominated either The Battle of Algiers or Closely Watched Trains and none that they would have nominated Isabel.

The Odd Couple had been nominated for two Oscars but so had Planet of the Apes; The Producers; The Shoes of the Fisherman; The Subject Was Roses; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Finian’s Rainbow. Faces had been nominated for three. Somewhere amongst these films were our likely other three nominees. I close my eyes and throw three darts. They land Planet of the Apes; The Subject Was Roses and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.