BEST PICTURE NO SURE THING; DON'T EVEN TRY TO PREDICT HOW ACADEMY VOTE WILL GO.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Millions of promotional dollars are spent, formulas are worked and worried to the point of absurdity and pundits predict with stupefyingly misplaced confidence, yet the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stubbornly remain a hard-to-figure lot.

We all like to think we have a handle on the academy's taste. Oscar's a sucker for British costume dramas, actors playing invalids, actors who write their own scripts, etc. Artistic conservatism and political liberalism, the conventional wisdom goes, are what this most Hollywood of institutions responds to. Ditto large scope and technical virtuosity, the two foundations of American cinema that no other nation's can much.

But while these notions often seem to prove themselves when nominations are announced and Oscar night rolls around, they're defied almost as frequently. The voters inevitably prove themselves hipper than we expected, or quirkier, or influenced to a surprising degree by popular tastes, or by critics, or, in the case of ``Babe'' a few years back, by their grandkids.

A survey of Best Picture winners proves that voting trends, while apparent at times, have never been sure things. Amid a sea of social-problem pictures in the late '40s - ``The Lost Weekend,'' ``The Best Years of Our Lives,'' ``Gentleman's Agreement,'' ``All the King's Men'' - the academy found a place for Shakespeare in 1948, when Laurence Olivier's ``Hamlet'' was crowned.

Similarly, the racially charged cop drama ``In the Heat of the Night'' won in 1967, following a slew of overproduced musicals and English period pieces and followed, the next year, by a combination of both - ``Oliver!''

Eclectic '90s

The elusive pattern has continued - indeed, accelerated - in the '90s. Just when you thought the Oscar choosers would forever be dazzled by epic-scale histories and progressive social themes, they went and gave back-to-back Best Pictures to a thriller about a serial killer (``The Silence of the Lamb'') and an austere, nihilistic western (``Unforgiven''), the type of genre items that were considered too disreputable for consideration throughout most of the academy's 70-year history.

A year ago, the academy reacted to the disappearing humanity in studio commercial products by fielding an almost all-indie, little-pictures-about-people slate. But the current front-runner is the most expensive, highest-grossing techno-ride in history, ``Titanic,'' which has received 14 nominations, tying the all-time record set by ``All About Eve'' - a film, by contrast, built solely around dialogue and behavior.

``Every year you think you spot a trend, they'll do something to prove you wrong,'' says Damien Bona, co-author of the authoritative and irreverent ``Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards.'' ``It used to be, for a long time, that if a movie was the highest-grosser of the year, it was automatically disqualified (for winning the Best Picture race). `Forrest Gump' changed that, and `Titanic' will this year.''

Yet the feeling that a kind of semi-official, academy taste persists. Certainly, big has never gone out of vogue for long; if there's one obvious lesson to be gleaned from 70 years of Best Picture watching, it's that the academy always comes back to romantic, historical spectacles like the last two winners, ``The English Patient'' and ``Braveheart.''

``They go through periods when you think, gosh, the academy's gotten really cool, then they go back to their old ways,'' Bona observes. ``Maybe it's a pendulum, like politics: too many films about people sitting around talking win, then they want some action and spectacle.''

Mirror of society

More interestingly, changes in academy tastes seem influenced by currents in society at large. Obviously, films like ``Mrs. Miniver'' and ``Casablanca'' reflected wartime worries, but later winners expressed the subtler concerns of their day.

``Back in the late '60s, social and emotional turbulence was the mark of the day,'' observes Tony Angellotti, a public relations executive who's worked on the Oscar campaigns for ``Good Will Hunting,'' ``The English Patient,'' ``Il Postino'' and many others. ``So you saw films like `Z,' `Bonnie and Clyde,' `Easy Rider' and `The Graduate' being nominated. By the '70s, people were perceiving lots of problems with the family. So, whether they were good enough or just plain great, films like the `Godfathers,' `Kramer vs. Kramer' and `Ordinary People' were getting awards.''

And this year? The Best Picture nominees all are concerned, in one way or another, with money. It's rich vs. poor in ``Titanic,'' the well-off help the financially troubled in ``As Good as It Gets,'' Will Hunting has to choose between his working-class past and a better-paying future, greed drives much of ``L.A. Confidential's'' corruption and, of course, the ``Full Monty'' guys are just trying to earn a few pounds.

Perhaps the academy voters are concerned about the Asian economic meltdown. Or, despite their privileged lifestyles, maybe they empathize with fellow baby boomers' fears about downsizing, health costs and underfunded retirement. Undoubtedly, these industry insiders are hyper-aware of the skyrocketing cost of making movies ($75.6 million per, according to recent Motion Picture Association of America data) in this time of record grosses.

``I don't think many of them would ever acknowledge it but, at least subliminally, a film's financial success influences voters,'' observes Fred Klein, co-editor of the newly released third edition of ``The Film Encyclopedia.''

`Titanic' reward?

``People in the industry are running scared,'' adds ``Inside Oscar's'' Bona. ``So when somebody like Jim Cameron makes an expensive gamble pay off, I think voters want to reward them out of a sense of empathy.''

The academy's executive director Bruce Davis, however, feels that when it comes to big bucks pictures, ``Titanic'' is probably an exception to Oscar's unspoken rule.

``It's going to be very difficult for expensive, studio-produced movies to get the kind of almost automatic nominations in the future that they might have gotten at an earlier point in academy history,'' Davis says. `` `Titanic' is clearly a big, very expensive movie, but it is also extraordinarily well-wrought.''

The fairly recent phenomenon of sending videotapes to academy members has leveled the playing field between large-scale spectaculars and smaller, character-driven movies, and that's affecting voting patterns.

``As horrified as some of us are by the idea of making judgments on cinematography from a TV screen, it's undeniable that voters, as a whole, are seeing more movies these days than they used to have time for,'' Davis notes. ``If you're working on two pictures a year, you miss a lot of movies, and there had been a tendency to catch up with the big ones at the end of the year, not the little ones.

``That's simply not happening anymore. If these movies have extraordinary screenplays and performances, we're finding them.''

And that, more than anything, should impact Oscar trends for the foreseeable future. Sure, ``Titanic'' looks unbeatable at this point, but note that its four competitors, like all of last year's Best Picture nominees, are unusual stories with unique characters.

``There will still be some years when the voters go back to more conservative, conventionally well-made products,'' ``Film Encyclopedia's'' Klein predicts. ``But overall, I think the subject matter of Oscar contenders is going to get more interesting.''

WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN AN OSCAR

`It's always the same. It's luck and timing. It's not necessarily the best movie or performances, but the one that resonates at the moment. That's why you look at some movies three years later and think, ``Gee, how could that movie not win anything?'' '

Barry Levinson

five-time nominee, Best Director winner for ``Rain Man''

`I still don't know how it happened. I don't remember anything. A year later, I'm still numbed-out.'

Billy Bob Thornton 

two-time nominee, Best Adapted Screenplay winner for ``Sling Blade''

`It helps if the work has some sort of social relevance, like examining the life of an alcoholic or Jack Nicholson suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. These are important issues, there's something to that worth looking at and, I think, it helps humanity in general. The academy appreciates that as well.'

Nicolas Cage

Best Actor winner for ``Leaving Las Vegas''

CAPTION(S):

7 Photos, 2 Boxes

Photo: (1) The Oscar voters have a weak spot for massive historical spectacles, such as 1995 Best Picture winner ``Braveheart.''

(2) The record 14 Academy Award nominations earned by Best Picture winner ``All About Eve'' in 1950 was tied this year by ``Titanic.''

(3) The academy doesn't usually go for westerns or other genre films, but ``Unforgiven'' came out on top in 1992.

(4) Billy Crystal will serve as host

(5) Barry Levinson

(6) Nicolas Cage

(7) Bill Bob Thornton

Box: (1) WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN AN OSCAR (See Text)

(2) OSCARS '98 - YOUR PICKS - WINNERS