c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421,1551(at sign)compuserve.com.)

(RNS)-When Hollywood film mogul Frank Capra quit the business in disgust a quarter century ago, he minced no words about the reasons why.”The winds of change blew through the dream factories of make-believe, tore at its crinoline tatters,”Capra wrote in”The Name Above the Title,”his autobiography.”The hedonists, the homosexuals, the hemophilic bleeding hearts, the God-haters, the quick buck artists who substituted shock for talent all cried: Shake em! Rattle em! God is dead. … Emancipate our films from morality. … To hell with the good in man. Dredge up his evil! Shock!” But even Capra himself could not complain about this year’s Oscar winners.

By honoring”Braveheart”as Best Film and Susan Sarandon as Best Actress in”Dead Man Walking,”the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made it clear that the film industry is beginning to recognize the dangers of filling the film firmament with nothing but moral black holes.

All the nominees for Best Picture had uplifting themes, from Scottish rebels’ quest for freedom to the heroism of astronauts; from a postman in love to the manners of 19th-century British society and even a talking pig.

There was, indeed, nearly an excess of positive films in this year’s Oscar nominees.”Dead Man Walking,”the story of a nun who ministers to a death row inmate out of the love of Christ, earned Susan Sarandon her first Oscar as Best Actress.

The Academy’s choice of films with such overwhelmingly positive messages sent some critics straight up the wall and into the rafters.

Hal Hinson of The Washington Post was typical, calling the nominations the”most political in the 68-year history of the awards,”nothing less than a cynical attempt to”inoculate the business from another season of criticism.” Clearly, the idea that”Braveheart,””Apollo 13,”and”Sense and Sensibility”could dominate the awards was seen as a sort of unnatural act, presumably because they contained no, well, unnatural acts.

Meanwhile, some critics wailed that it was an American tragedy that”Leaving Las Vegas”was not nominated for Best Picture.

Was the failure to nominate this film due to ineptitude, or, worse, was it the result of political pressure? The film, for those who have not seen it, is about an alcoholic and a prostitute who, despite being brutalized by her customers, doesn’t want to quit her job.

Director Mike Figgis called it a”love story,”and went so far as to say leading man Nicholas Cage-who won an Oscar for Best Actor-has”exactly the same charm and integrity”as none other than Jimmy Stewart.

One hates to be overly optimistic, but I don’t think there was anything amiss here for failing to choose”Leaving Las Vegas”as Best Picture of the year. To my mind, the Academy merely recognized that a film about a prostitute and a drunk really isn’t about anything more than the relationship between a prostitute and a drunk, which is hardly a common arrangement in the real world.

In the end, this year’s awards seem to reflect Frank Capra’s maxim:”Movies should be a positive expression that there is hope, love, mercy, justice and charity,”he once said.”It is the filmmaker’s responsibility to emphasize the positive qualities of humanity by showing the triumph of the individual over adversities.” The box office concurs. As of last month,”Toy Story”made 24 times as much money as the extremely tawdry”Showgirls.”The former was rated G, the other NC-17.

Hollywood has been rightly criticized for its glorification of what are lightly called”anti-social acts.” This year’s Academy Awards demonstrated a growing respect for the sensibilities of those who do not believe they have been deprived should a leading lady fail to utter endless obscenities or when a leading man fails to show us his bare rear end. For which we can say, Bravo.

And, for those who might be wondering, I noticed that Oliver Stone’s”Nixon”did not earn a nomination. This clearly suggests a conspiracy of good taste-the exposure of which, no doubt, will constitute Stone’s next project.

MJP END COLSON