Anti-Nazi campaign threatens Kate Winslet’s Oscar hopes

Kate Winslet's chances of emerging victorious at the Oscars next Sunday are in jeopardy due to an orchestrated campaign against The Reader, the post-war drama for which she has been nominated as best actress, in the run-up to tomorrow’s deadline for the Academy’s final votes.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, emails detailing the movie's alleged ambivalence to the Nazi regime - it has been said that Winslet's character, Hanna Schmitz, an illiterate concentration camp guard who shows no remorse for her crimes, is treated too sympathetically - have been sent to selected Jewish members of the 5,800 voting panel by publicists batting for rival films.

A film industry consultant based in Los Angeles, who asked not to be named, told the paper: "There's a great deal of Jewish influence in Hollywood and this sort of thing has the power to swing a few votes."

The detractors certainly have a lot of negative feeling to build on. Last week, Ron Rosenbaum, the author of the critically acclaimed book Explaining Hitler, called on the Oscar judges to discount the movie, which has also been nominated for best picture, best screenplay [David Hare] and best director [Stephen Daldry].

Writing for Slate.com under the headline 'Don't Give an Oscar to The Reader', Rosenbaum claimed its selection as a best picture nominee was "stunning proof that Hollywood seems to believe that if it's a Holocaust film, it must be worthy of approbation, end of story".

He said: "This is a film whose essential metaphorical thrust is to exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution." And in a direct attack on Winslet's role, Rosenbaum, whose book is regarded as a definitive account of how Hitler won over ordinary Germans, called The Reader "a film that asks us to empathise with an unrepentant mass murderer".

The Telegraph's source said: "There's very little chance that The Reader is going to win best picture, but Kate Winslet is in a very tough fight with Meryl Streep [for her performance in Doubt], who's Hollywood royalty, for best actress. If people get put off The Reader, they've got an obvious place to go. This just might make the difference."
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