Directors Guild Fails to Catch the ‘Scent’ : Movies: The Al Pacino film is ignored as Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood, James Ivory, Neil Jordan and Rob Reiner win nominations.

How quickly things change in Hollywood. After its victory at Saturday’s Golden Globe Awards, “Scent of a Woman,” starring Al Pacino, seemed on a sure track for the Oscars onMarch 29.

But when the Directors Guild of America nominations were announced Monday, there was no trace of “Scent” or its producer-director Martin Brest.

If history holds, the winner of the Oscar for best director of 1992--and very likely the best picture Oscar--will be one of the five Directors Guild nominees:

* Robert Altman for “The Player.” Altman was previously nominated for “MASH” and “Nashville.”

* Clint Eastwood for “Unforgiven.” It is his first nomination.

* James Ivory for “Howards End.” Ivory was nominated once before for “A Room With a View.”

* Neil Jordan for “The Crying Game.” It is Jordan’s first nomination.

* Rob Reiner for “A Few Good Men.” Reiner was previously nominated for “Stand by Me” and “When Harry Met Sally.”

In eight of the last 10 years, the winner of the Directors Guild award has gone on to win the directing Oscar and the director’s film has, in turn, won the Oscar for best picture of the year.

For those taking a longer view, only three times in the 45-year history of the directors prize have the winners failed to win the Oscar for direction.

That track record wasn’t lost on Reiner, who was reached by telephone Monday. “In my case, it hasn’t translated into Oscar nominations. But a translation would be nice.

“This nomination is always exciting because it is a recognition by your peers, the people who most understand the work,” Reiner said. His film, the military courtroom drama “A Few Good Men,” has been one of the major hits of the Christmas season and is considered a heavy prospect for Oscar nominations. Reiner, whose next project is titled “North,” said he was expecting to see “Malcolm X” and “Scent of a Woman” among the Directors Guild nominees. “A lot of what is considered work by outsiders showed up instead.”

As one of the film industry’s longstanding “outsiders,” Altman on Monday said the whole process of awards is “all promotion for movies. I had forgotten how many horse races there are.” His film, “The Player,” skewers Hollywood’s foibles and business methods, so there is a sense of deja vu for Altman. “I feel like I’m a player in my own movie,” he said.

Jordan’s “Crying Game” has been a surprise hit with moviegoers who apparently are keeping their mouths shut about its plot-line twists. He was surprised by his nomination: “There’s no equivalent for this. It’s great for me to realize that one’s fellow directors have noticed the direction.”

Jordan said he thinks the reason audiences are keeping the film’s story a secret is because “it’s an experience that they haven’t had in the theater in a long time. . . . The way films are marketed today, you are told everything about a movie before it even begins.”

Ivory, reached in New York, said he and his partner Ismail Merchant “no longer feel quite like outsiders or on the fringe. We’ve always worked independently. But almost all of our films in one way or another have been attached to studios.” Ivory, whose film “Howards End” has been accorded key honors among most film critics, called the Directors Guild recognition “very gratifying.”

Eastwood, reached en route to Carmel, said he never thinks in terms of accolades and is still surprised by reactions to “Unforgiven,” which he described as “very offbeat, even for the Western genre. . . . I think of the character I played in the film ‘White Hunter, Black Heart’ who said: ‘When you make a film you have to forget that anyone is going to see it.’ ”

“Unforgiven” was voted best film of the year by the Los Angeles critics and during the weekend was the choice of critics in London.

The winner of the Directors Guild prize for 1991 films was Jonathan Demme for “The Silence of the Lambs.” Demme went on to win the directing Oscar and the film was named best picture.

The two exceptions to the Directors Guild/Oscar correlation in the last 10 years occurred first in 1985, when Steven Spielberg won the guild’s award for “The Color Purple,” while Sydney Pollack won the directing Oscar for “Out of Africa”--which went on to be named best picture. The second instance was in 1989’s race when Oliver Stone won the guild prize and the Oscar for directing “Born on the Fourth of July.” But best picture that year was “Driving Miss Daisy.”