The highest honor that a filmmaker can possibly aspire to is a Best Director Academy Award. Handed out since the very first Oscars in 1929, nominations for this highly coveted award have gone to several of the greatest movie directors the art form has ever had. Much more often than not, a Best Directing nomination comes with at least a few other nods in different categories—including, quite often, Best Picture. Seven noteworthy times in history, however, that wasn’t the case. On these seven occasions, the only Oscar nod a film received was Best Directing.
The reason why this phenomenon is so rare is that it’s almost impossible to conceive a film that the Academy deems worthy of a nomination in what’s arguably the second most prestigious prize of the night, but not in any other category. The directors who have attained such an honor, however, are among the most important filmmakers in history. From David Lynch to Martin Scorsese, they’re directors so strong that the Academy looked at their movies and decided their work was so great that it deserved a Directing nod, even if they didn’t deem the film worthy of any more recognition. They are presented in chronological order.
7
‘The Inn of the Sixth Happiness’ (1958) — Mark Robson
The first time that a movie’s sole nomination was for Best Directing was in 1959, when Mark Robson received the second Oscar nomination of his career, for The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. This was only a year after he had received his first nomination, for the crime drama Peyton Place. As for The Inn, it’s a biopic starring Ingrid Bergman as Gladys Aylward, a British evangelical missionary who ran an inn for traveling merchants in China during the tumultuous years leading up to WWII.
It was only Robson who received a nomination, with the DGA having been the only precursor award he’d been nominated for beforehand.
Though terribly underappreciated nowadays, this is one of Ingrid Bergman’s most essential movies, where she delivers a phenomenal performance that was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. When it came time for the Oscars, however, it was only Robson who received a nomination, with the DGA having been the only precursor award he’d been nominated for beforehand. It was a perfectly well-deserved nomination, too. Robson bring a dramatic, moving tone to this sweeping historical epic, which doesn’t have a single dead spot throughout its nearly 3-hour runtime.
6
‘Alice’s Restaurant’ (1969) — Arthur Penn
Alice’s Restaurant is an adaptation of the 1967 folk song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” by Arlo Guthrie. Movie adaptations of singular songs aren’t exactly typical, but this dramedy (in which Guthrie stars as himself) shines thanks to its uniqueness. It follows a bohemian musician who, after dumping trash in the bottom of a ravine, gets arrested for littering and is sent on a bizarre journey. It’s a simple, laid-back, countercultural gem that’s kind of like if Easy Rider went easier on the sociopolitics and much heavier on the vibes.
Some have criticized the film for being a bit too politically lukewarm, but it’s such a warm, funny, and welcoming slice-of-life flick that it’s impossible to hate it outright. The Academy certainly didn’t hate it, as director Arthur Penn was Oscar-nominated without having been a part of any precursors. This was his third Oscar nomination after The Miracle Worker in 1963 and Bonnie and Clyde in 1968. Penn’s direction is a complex balancing act of charming humor and countercultural melancholy, a balancing act that he admirably succeeds at. His direction is far and away the most brilliant part of this rather imperfect film, and as such, his Oscar nod was nothing to complain about.
5
‘Fellini Satyricon’ (1969) — Federico Fellini
There has never been an Italian filmmaker more popular, important, or groundbreaking than the great Federico Fellini. Studying his filmography is the best possible way of learning about the trajectory of 20th-century Italian cinema: The auteur began his career as an essential voice in the Italian Neorealist movement, and one can track the country’s move away from that tradition by tracking Fellini’s shift toward more subjective, psychologically personal cinema. By the time he made Fellini Satyricon, the director had already moved as far away from any kind of neorealist aesthetic current as he could possibly get.
Lavish and hedonistic, this episodic series of disjointed mythological tales set in 1st-century Rome is one of Fellini’s most divisive yet audacious works. Precursors didn’t adore Satyricon, but some of them certainly recognized it (it received a Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe nomination). When the Oscars came, however, it was only Fellini’s brilliance that received recognition. It’s not like anyone’s complaining: This was a well-earned nomination for an artist that was nominated for 12 Oscars throughout his career (but never won), for a film that presents some of the most adventurous, visually striking, and artistically confident direction of any ’60s motion picture.
4
‘Blue Velvet’ (1986) — David Lynch
It was incredibly divisive among critics and audiences alike when it originally came out, but today, David Lynch‘s cult classic Blue Velvet is recognized by many as one of the greatest movie masterpieces of the 20th century. The late David Lynch was a genius madman with a camera, an easy choice for the title of “most important surrealist filmmaker of modern times.” For this sexually-charged neo-noir masterpiece, some started seeing Lynch as a master of subversive cinema, while others heavily criticized how explicit his work was. In the end, though, after a pretty decent run throughout the 1986-87 awards season, Lynch made it all the way to his second Best Directing nomination, and third Oscar nod overall.
Blue Velvet may have been controversial back in ’86, but with the years’ passage, this Oscar nomination has come to age as one of the most inspired and satisfying of the decade. Erotic, sensual, intense, and as perfectly dreamlike as the rest of Lynch’s filmography, Blue Velvet is a nearly faultless example of what the work of an auteur in full control of his craft looks like. The way Lynch pushes both the characters and the audience to constantly shocking—but never exploitative—places was more than enough to make him worthy of that Oscar nod.
3
‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (1988) — Martin Scorsese
There are those who would refer to Martin Scorsese as the single greatest living filmmaker, and no one would blame them. He’s made several of the greatest films in history, but like any great director worth their salt, his career hasn’t been without its fair share of controversy. There’s really not much of a question as to what Scorsese’s most controversial picture is: That title would have to go to The Last Temptation of Christ. This religious drama penned by frequent Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader was based on the equally-controversial novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, and is a fictional exploration of the spiritual conflict of Jesus’ human side. Despite the “fictional” part, however, various Christian groups across the world attacked and boycotted the movie, calling it blasphemous.
With time, that rage has cooled down and cinephiles have come to appreciate this criminally underrated gem as what it is: One of Scorsese’s biggest masterpieces and greatest epics. Despite all the controversy and no significant precursors to his name, Scorsese obtained the Best Directing Oscar nod. The decision has aged beautifully. Meditatively paced and shockingly powerful (both intellectually and emotionally), Last Temptation offers some of Scorsese’s strongest 20th-century work. His direction has arguably aged even better than that of the 1989 Oscar winner, The Last Emperor‘s Bernardo Bertolucci.
2
‘Short Cuts’ (1993) — Robert Altman
Robert Altman was one of the greatest and most important voices of the New Hollywood film movement, offering some of the era’s most subversive and brilliantly satirical films, often with huge ensemble casts. He kept doing terrific work for the rest of his career, too, which obviously includes the ’90s. His best film of that decade? There’s hardly any question about it: It has to be Short Cuts, an anthology movie inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver.
The movie was a tragic box office flop, but it performed wonderfully with critics, who labeled it a beautifully complex ensemble piece. For his flawless balance between humor and emotion, his ability to keep the story engaging throughout every second of the 189-minute runtime, and the fact that he pulled equally-exceptional performances out of every actor in his star-studded cast, Altman made his way to the fourth Best Directing (and fifth overall) Oscar nomination of his career, following a decent precursor run. It’s easily one of the best films of this masterful director’s career; so, if anything, it deserved even more Oscar nominations.
1
‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001) — David Lynch
Who else but David Lynch could possibly be deserving of the honor of being the sole recipient of an Oscar nomination for one of his films twice? In all fairness, as one of the greatest films of not just the 21st century, but of all time, Mulholland Drive deserved many nominations on top of Best Directing. At a minimum, Best Picture, Best Actress for both Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, Best Supporting Actor for Justin Theroux, and a Best Screenplay nod for one of the best scripts of the 2000s would have been in order. But it’s a tried-and-true sad fact of life that the Academy doesn’t always get things right (particularly when it comes to arthouse and surrealist films), so a Best Directing nomination is better than nothing.
It also couldn’t have happened for a more deserving directing work. Mulholland Drive is widely praised as Lynch’s best film, and as such, as the best directing work of his career. What starts out as a quirky, melodramatic, mysterious critique of the Hollywood Dream slowly starts transforming into a waking nightmare, and Lynch handles that transition like a pro. Dreamlike, thought-provoking, and full of fascinating symbolism and imagery, Mulholland Drive has aged as the greatest film of 2001 by a decent margin. No shade to Ron Howard or A Beautiful Mind, but this would have been remembered as a far stronger and more satisfying Best Picture and Best Directing recipient.