Spielberg becomes the king of Oscar nominations

Steven Spielberg has become the director with the most Oscar nominations, ahead of William Wyler.

With the seven harvested by his

, (film, director, secondary actress, photography, production design, costume design and sound), the filmography of ET's father accumulates 138, six more than that of the director of

and

the only one to have directed three feature films, the aforementioned, winners of the Oscar for best film.

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If the reference is Wyler's official filmography, Spielberg had already anticipated him, because the films signed by the former add up to 128 nominations, a figure that the latter reached in 2016 with the six obtained by

(later he would add two more in 2018 with

and one in 2019 with

.

But if the nomination that he garnered in 1936

and the three in 1939 of

two titles in which Wyler participated, but which he did not complete (Howard Hawks finished the first and HC Potter and Stuart Heisler successively took over the second), the number rises to 132, one more than the number of films by the director of

before his new version of the musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.

Of course, so that the filmography of Spielberg, 75 years old, reached in this edition that of Wyler in number of Oscar,

should win the seven to which he aspires, because the films directed by the former add up to 34 statuettes, and those signed by the latter, who along with John Ford was considered for decades a kind of gold standard of quality cinema invoiced by the studios of Hollywood, they came to gather 41. No one else comes close, neither in number of candidacies nor in awards.

Ford's films, the only one to win the award for best direction four times (followed in that classification by Wyler himself, with three), accumulated 75 nominations that translated into 23 awards.

Vincente Minnelli achieved one more Oscar (24) with his films, although with fewer nominations: 53. Billy Wilder, Wyler's friend and who joked with Wyler about the fans who confused them because of the similar last name and congratulated them for having directed the films of the other,

garnered 73 nominations and 17 awards.

And Martin Scorsese goes for 91 and 20.

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Industry surrendered in your favor

The data reflects the magnitude reached by Spielberg in an industry that always took him into account even though for years it denied him the highest honor: that of awarding him at its annual party as best director, something he did not achieve until 1994 with

His second feature film,

was already a candidate for best film in 1976;

with the third,

he aspired two years later for the first time to the statuette as best director, and both

and

which in 1982 and 1983 added eight and nine nominations respectively, also competed for the two main awards, although they had to settle, like the previous titles, with technical prizes.

The jump of the filmmaker from Cincinatti from the

to a cinema with a vocation for being prestigious —and therefore, a firm candidate for an Oscar—, the anti-racist melodrama

based on the Pulitzer-winning novel by Alice Walker, it obtained 11 nominations in 1986, although there were none for Spielberg and on the night of the Oscars the film's locker was left at zero, which ended up consolidating the story that the then known as the King Midas of Hollywood was a forgotten of the Academy.

Spielberg finally won his Oscar for best director at the age of 47, for the fourth nomination, and repeated five years later, in 1999, with

Wyler was also slow to succeed at the Oscars, even though he later came to be considered his favourite.

He did it in 1943, with

which won six awards, including best director for him, who then, after almost two decades of career and thirty feature films, was 40 years old and had five nominations.

In fact, the two previous years the night of the awards had been fateful: in 1941 he had two films in the final stretch, the western

which won one of the three awards to which it aspired, and

a criminal drama with Bette Davis who competed for seven and did not take any, and in 1942

a melodrama with the same protagonist, added nine nominations;

however, the night of truth also left empty.

The direct relationship between Wyler and Spielberg

William Wyler did not come to collect his award for

a piece of propaganda in the form of an ode to the courage of British housewives who stayed home while their husbands fought in World War II, because he was in London working on several documentaries shot with the army that Spielberg would gloss in

(2017), the docuseries produced by him dedicated to analyzing the films that five great filmmakers (Wyler, Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston and George Stevens) made at the front between 1941 and 1945. His first film after the war,

a drama about the life of soldiers after returning home, returned to sweep at the 1947 gala, in which he took eight statuettes.

critics ,

who considered him too conventional, did reserve for Ford or Howard Hawks, but he was always a prophet in his land.

The 11 Oscars that

won in 1960 were a record that would only be matched later by

in 1998 and

the closure of the trilogy of

in 2004. His 12 nominations for best director, on the other hand, have never been equaled.

Spielberg, who is competing for the eighth time in the category of best direction, also won his two Oscars as a director for two films related to World War II, and, with his continuous going back and forth between the big show and a more vocationally serious cinema (

and its patina of classicism, has managed to gain prestige and, like Wyler in his time, establish itself as a kind of high-quality industrial cinema that, however, still does not convince important segments of criticism.

With

he has received the majority of critical applause, although the film, which cost 100 million dollars, has barely raised 63. But beyond the box office failure of his musical, Spielberg has been one of the figures for decades most influential, renowned and powerful American cinema.

underway

;

a

of Leonard Bernstein with Bradley Cooper in front of and behind the cameras;

a new World War II series,

which follows in the footsteps

and

and the fifth installment of the adventures of Indiana Jones, the first not to be directed by Spielberg himself, whose next film,

already in post-production, will have autobiographical overtones.

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