Spielberg Receives Ninth Best Director Nomination

Steven Spielberg is one of five nominees for the 51st annual Directors Guild of America’s best director award. Spielberg, who took home the best director Golden Globe Award on Sunday for “Saving Private Ryan,” is proving to be the strongest Academy Award contender. Only four times since 1949 has the DGA Award winner not gone on to win the Oscar for best director.

The other nominees, announced Monday in Los Angeles, are John Madden for “Shakespeare in Love,” Terrence Malick for “The Thin Red Line,” Peter Weir for “The Truman Show,” and Roberto Benigni for “Life is Beautiful.”

World War II films are this year’s hot award ticket. Spielberg’s graphic depiction of the brutality of war in “Saving Private Ryan” will receive strong competition from Malick’s “The Thin Red Line,” a three-hour war meditation, and Benigni’s often comical and honest holocaust film, “Life Is Beautiful.”

The critically acclaimed “The Thin Red Line” is Malick’s first film since 1978’s “Days of Heaven.” Though Malick won the New York Film Critics Award for best director last month, he failed to be nominated for a Golden Globe. Italian comedian Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful” did not make the Golden Globe list because it did not meet the Hollywood Foreign Press Association qualifications. However, the film does qualify for the Academy Awards.

Though it was Spielberg who received the best director Golden Globe, Weir and Madden were both nominated. Madden and Spielberg are also likely to have a close race for the best film Oscar - “Shakespeare In Love,” received the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy, while “Saving Private Ryan” was named best drama, beating out Weir’s surreal “The Truman Show” in that category.

This is Spielberg’s ninth DGA Award nomination, making him the most nominated director in the feature film category. He has won the award twice; in 1985 for “The Color Purple,” and again in 1993 for “Schindler’s List.”

“The Truman Show” marks Weir’s third DGA nomination. Benigni, Madden and Malick are all first-time nominees.

The Directors Guild of America represents over 10,000 member directors working in the U.S. and abroad. The television nominees will be announced on Feb. 1. The 51st annual DGA Awards dinner will be held on March 6 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.