Archiving Oscar ceremonies of yesteryear

      For better or worse, the Academy Awards are a piece of movie history. And while, thanks to restorations of film prints and the influence of home video, a large amount of Academy Award-winning films are available for us to view, many of the ceremonies at which they won these awards are not. That's unfortunate. I still have a VHS tape hosted by then Academy President Karl Malden taking us through clips, highlights, memorable speeches, and musical performances of Oscars past. It's a fun watch and prompted me to seek out more, albeit to middling results. 

     Thanks to Youtube, that's now possible, and I speak specially of the Oscars official Youtube channel. Yes, in the past fans have uploaded Oscar clips from their old worn-out VHS tapes for the world to see, but the quality was usually subpar. The Oscars official Youtube page seeks to change that, and they are doing an excellent job going through the vaults and releasing quality clips of previous ceremonies. Surprisingly enough, they're not the most obvious categories/moments one would expect them to upload; these aren't all "hit getters". Just this week alone, the page uploaded clips of Thelma Schnoonmaker winning Best Film Editing for Raging Bull, Bruce Joel Rubin winning Best Original Screenplay for Ghost, Akira Kurosawa being presented an Honorary Award from admirers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Chariots of Fire winning Best Costume Design, Jaws winning Best Sound, and many more. 

     These will not excite most of the general public, I suppose, but for film fans looking for a little blast from the past (or discovering something anew), it's a mini goldmine. Who knew that Yul Brenner presented Francois Truffaut with an Oscar for Best Foreign Film at the 1974 ceremony? And that Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles presented Mel Brooks with an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1969? I'm a sucker for clips like these, and often find myself surfing their page for newly restored content of the old. If there are any gripes, they are ones to be expected: footage of the nominated films, usually shown when presenting the Acting categories to give the audience at home a sampling of the performance, have been cut out due to rights issues. I imagine many musical performances also cannot be uploaded due to that very reason. 

     Nonetheless, what the Oscar Youtube page provides is remarkably extensive enough (outside of releasing entire ceremonies on DVD, providing another burden having to deal with multiple rights, etc.) and the quality is much appreciated. To search through some pretty worthwhile history, start browsing here.