Two films by former Oscar winning directors dominated the 1984 awards season.

Daivd Lean, who previously won for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrenece of Arabia, was represented by A Passage to India while Milos Forman, who previously won for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was represented by Amadeus.

Lean’s elaborate production of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India was his first film in fourteen years and his return to critical hosannas after the drubbing he got his last time out with Ryan’s Daughter.

Forman’s equally elaborate filming of the Broadway hit about the rivalry between Mozart and court composer Salieri, was his most ambitious production to date.

Amadeus won the L.A. Film Critics award, which was the first group to bestow its honors this year, but A Passage to India won the next two pre-cursors, the National Board of Review and N.Y. Film Critics awards. The National Society of Film Critics, as they often did, went their own way and awarded Jim Jarmusch’s aptly named Stranger Than Paradise, a film that was not likely to garner any Oscar consideration. The Golden Globes skirted the issue by giving Amadeus their Best Picture – Drama award and A Passage to India their Best Foreign Film award – it was a British production, after all.

The Directors Guild nominated both Lean and Forman along with Robert Benton for the farm-in-peril drama, Places in the Heart; Norman Jewison for the murder mystery set in a WWII black Army barracka, A Soldier’s Story and Roland Joffe for the compelling true story of Cambodian Dith Pran’s escape from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge in The Killing Fields. All five were destined to repeat at the Oscars, with their films all nominated for Best Picture.

Amadeus and A Passage to India led the nominations with 11 each. Places in the Heart and The Killing Fields had 7 each while A Soldier’s Story trailed with 3.

What, then, would the other nominees have been had Oscar gone to ten this year?

Nothing is a sure bet this year but Wim Wenders’ redemptive Paris, Texas; John Huston’s merciless Under the Volcano; Glenn Jordan’s compassionate Mass Appeal; Alan Parker’s moving Birdy and Pat O’Connor’s tale of forbidden love, Cal, get my vote.

With the Directors’ Guild award safely in his pocket, Forman and Amadeus seemed headed for victory, nothing was certain until the envelopes were open.  In the end, though, Amadeus won eight and A Passage to India, two, proving it wasn’t much of a contest at all!.