Other films may have been better, but in 1990 you were either in the GoodFellas camp or the Dances With Wolves camp.

By this time there was a general agreement among certain influential critics that Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull had been the best film of the 1980s. They were flummoxed by the fact Scorsese and his film had lost the Oscar to an actor (Robert Redford) and his film (Ordinary People) and outraged that the same thing could be happening again this year as actor Kevin Costner, who had only been a “star” since 1987, could take top honors this year.

It was fascinating to watch year end awards from the National Board of Review and Golden Globes go to Dances With Wolves while the Los Angeles Film Critics, New York Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics all honored GoodFellas. Personally I thought the whole thing was silly. I thought the Academy made the right choice in honoring Ordinary People over Raging Bull and always thought Scorsese a better spokesman for film preservation than he was a director, but I digress.

The forces behind Dances With Wolves simply felt it was time a western won a Best Picture Oscar as none had won since 1931’s Cimarron. Ironically neither film is a traditional western. Cimarron, taken from an Edna Ferber novel, was more soap opera than actioner and Dances With Wolves, though filled with action, veered into “new age” territory more often than not.

I found both films to be flawed as indeed everything was this year, but something had to win. I preferred GoodFellas simply because I thought it was the better made film, not because I felt Scorsese was “owed”, but again I digress.

There were other “good” movies including The Godfather, Part III (almost, but not quite, ruined by Francis Ford Coppola’s casting of his daughter Sophia in a pivotal role), Stephen Frears’ tense and exciting The Grifters and Barbet Schroeder’s horrific real life examination of a crime, Reversal of Fortune. The directors of all five of these films were nominated for Oscars but only three of their films made it into the Best Picture lineup: GoodFellas; Dances With Wolves and The Godfather, Part III. Rounding out the Best Picture slate were Penny Marshall’s Awakenings and Jerry Zucker’s Ghost, both of which were well made and extremely popular though neither had much of a chance of winning.

Had Oscar gone to a ten picture slate of nominees the list would definitely have had room for The Grifters and Reversal of Fortune. Others that might have made the cut include Barry Levinson’s immigration drama, Avalon; James Ivory’s look at an American marriage, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge and either Bernardo Bertolucci’s adaptation of Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky or the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, though the latter may have been one too many gangster films.

And, yes, Kevin Costner and his Dances With Wolves won, setting up both a quest to give an Oscar to a “real” western two years later and a long period in which every Scorsese film was positioned as the film that would “finally” win him an Oscar.