A GOOD CIGAR, A BRANDY AND THOU, OSCAR

Mention the best-picture category this year and you can find yourself in a good brisk discussion. It’s an intriguing contrast to last year, when it was virtually assured that “Terms of Endearment” was going to steam into that slot without close competition. 1985 still seems to be a race: People seem to think “Amadeus” will win, yet at the same time they have very strong emotions about “The Killing Fields” as the academy’s choice.

(What’s funny is the suspicion that some academy members think these movies are a true cross section of American films. They should browse around an American Film Market some time, or wade through the tide of teen-age movies, so numerous that you begin to fantasize about contacting acne from overexposure to high school locker rooms.)

Actually, this year’s five nominated films are variations of the same theme: an individual battling against implacable surroundings--the segregated U.S. Army, the closed Austrian court, the caste system and raj mentality of India, the male-oriented rural South and the repressive Communist regime in Cambodia. No more loner odysseys, no more soul-shriveling introspection: These are all works of action.

Four of the five choices--”A Soldier’s Story,” “A Passage to India,” “Amadeus” and “Places in the Heart”--are no surprise from an academy that is, for the most part, as staid as the Academie Francaise. If you wished upon a “Cotton Club,” a “Choose Me,” a “Broadway Danny Rose” or a “Paris, Texas,” you have sadly misjudged this body politic. This year’s nominees are all solid, reasonable choices; they are serious or literary or, as in the case of “Amadeus” or “A Passage to India,” they are what is perceived to be “classy” films that impart to their nominators an aura of distinction as strong as the aroma of fine leather.

“Killing Fields” is the maverick, a film with a vast flaw but the most thrilling of the lot and, I suspect, the one that will be studied 40 years from now. And whether it has any chance will depend entirely on who votes and why.

This may be one of the last awards decided by the academy’s old guard. The younger members are growing in force; it will be interesting to see how long it is before their weight is felt in the voting. But there is a body of the academy that can barely be coaxed to academy screenings. They see films in the cozy, post-dinner comfort of other members’ screening rooms, where it’s quite possible that “Amadeus” or “A Passage to India” or even “Places in the Heart” would be served up like an after-dinner brandy, but it’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to plunge his or her guests into the horror of Khmer Rouge Cambodia (or even into a black Army barracks).

Academy members take their ballots seriously. You may hear someone say “I look through the nominees and vote for my friends’ pictures,” but the final ballots seem to be Serious Business. But members vote from among the films they have seen. And historically, it’s difficult-to-impossible to drag a certain constituency off to what are considered downers or even mavericks. (The lack of even one nomination for the remarkable “1984” is evidence at hand.) And so “How Green Was My Valley” won over “Citizen Kane”; “In the Heat of the Night” won over “The Graduate,” and “Patton” won over “MASH.” There is the rare exception, such as the best-picture award to “Midnight Cowboy,” but it is just that, a rarity.

It’s quite possible that, with younger blood, a new, more current, faintly more daring direction will slowly begin to emerge. This year should be an indication: Will a difficult and agonizing film like “Killing Fields” stand up against the sumptuousness and prestige of “Amadeus”? It would be fascinating to know the numbers in the balloting.