Your favorite films that *did* win best picture Oscar
American Beauty, Godfather pt 1 and 2, Annie Hall, Gladiator, The Departed, Million Dollar Baby, No Country for Old Men, Schindler’s List.
I’m shocked, shocked, that there are so many good films on my list (I’ve highlighted movies that I think were not mentioned above):
All Quite on the Western Front
It Happened One Night
Casablanca
Hamlet
From Here to Eternity
On the Waterfront
Marty
The Apartment
West Side Story
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Annie Hall
Gandhi
Platoon
Schindler’s List
BTW, if you adjust for inflation, I’ve been told that ANNIE HALL (1977) was the LOWEST-grossing Academy Award winner of all time. Go figure!
(Not that I pay any attention to the Academy’s picks OR box-office receipts.)
I’m going with BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES too.
thanks for also listing It Happened One Night, On the Waterfront, Annie Hall, Hamlet AND From Here to Eternity (what can i say?good love stories are good love stories folks!)
it’s all a game Frank,i personally like plenty of those films regardless of their awards, i remember we once had a thread referring to favorite Cannes Award winners, but i can’t seem to find it :(
I lean toward In the Heat of The Night and Out of Africa; also I liked that the academy recognized Benigni tho I think his work with Jarmusch and The Monster were much better than life is beautiful
In mentioning LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, Den brings up a good point, which I thought would be brought up by Dimitris, who often reminds us of our America-centric tastes: namely, that we have not mentioned the Best Foreign-Language Oscars, such as LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1998).
The first to win that award (under different rules) was BICYCLE THIEVES in 1949. Thereafter, the AMPAS awards went to many undeserving (and a few deserving) international movies, such as:
RASHOMON (1951)
FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952)
LA STRADA (1956)
NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957)
MON ONCLE (1958)
BLACK ORPHEUS (1959, over HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR & other New Wave releases)
THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961)
8 1/2 (1963)
A MAN AND A WOMAN (1967)
Z (1969)
THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972)
DAY FOR NIGHT (1973)
Notice that there are NO films by Godard, Resnais, Antonioni, Satijat Ray, Fassbinder, Herzog, Ozu, African or Cuban filmmakers, and only a few Chinese/Hong Kong filmmakers, etc. etc.
In 1956, the rules were changed to make the award competitive, and in 1976, the rules were changed again (I think that voters had to actually SEE the movies they were voting on!) and that allowed a “dark horse” to win: BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR. (Dimitris: In 1977, the Greek film IPHIGENIA was nominated but lost to MADAME ROSA.)
Other notable Foreign Language Oscars include:
THE TIN DRUM (1979)
FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1983)
CINEMA PARADISO (1989)
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999)
From what I can gather, these awards are even more “political” than the U.S. Oscars, especially since each nation can only submit one entry and, technically, the award goes to that country, not the filmmaker, who just picks up the statuette at the ceremony.
“which I thought would be brought up by Dimitris, who often reminds us of our America-centric tastes: namely, that we have not mentioned the Best Foreign-Language Oscars”
this category does not exist in my opinion because once handful of NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING films have already been nominated for Best Picture (The Emigrants,Letters from Iwo Jima etc),there’s NO DAMN REASON FOR THIS CATEGORY TO EVEN EXIST IN THE BEGINNING!!!!!!
curiously enough,how come we don’t talk about OTHER COUNTRIES’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE AWARDS?
are they INFERIOR TO THE OSCAR STABILITY AND “FAME”?
“From what I can gather, these awards are even more “political” than the U.S. Oscars”
not really political,just a Nobel Prize-style of support towards any particular awarded nation,only in America….
(and i thought that category belongs to the U.S. Oscars?)
p.s.: knowing that only 2 Greek film-makers have been nominated and knowing that only one of the two is of major attention (Cacoyannis of course) and knowing that only 1 out of his 2 nominated films deserves to be called a major masterpiece,i have long ago washed my hands against this ongoing travesty called Academy Award for a Foreign Language Motion Picture (or whatever it’s officially called)
favorite BP winners:
The Apartment (1960)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
It Happened One Night (1934)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
foreign winners:
8 1/2 (1963)
Closely Watched Trains (1967)
Amarcord (1974)
My Uncle (1958)
Z (1969)
the deer hunter
the sting ( wow it seems like i’m the only one who calls the sting)
@Rajiv Ibrahim: I tend to think of THE STING (1973) as a mildly amusing genre film, with over-the-top performances (admittedly appropriate for a light comedy). The musical score, adapted from Scott Joplin’s rags, was terrific, however. If it is one of your favorite films, that is a matter of taste, and you are entitled to your opinion.
However, I cannot think very highly of the movie’s Oscar victory for two reasons: (1) THE STING was up against Ingmar Bergman’s CRIES AND WHISPERS (of all things) that year. How can anyone claim that THE STING was a better film than CRIES AND WHISPERS?
Finally, (2) I also have moral objections about including THE STING among the great Oscar winners. The movie was plagiarized from a 1941 nonfiction book, and was settled out of court in the actual author’s favor.
Of course, this happens all the time. Steven Spielberg is one of the most notorious practitioners of the fine art of taking credit where credit is not due (see the many articles on the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and AMISTAD cases). While in Hollywood, I had a script ripped off myself and also did some consulting work on the Art Buchwald lawsuit against Paramount Pictures and COMING TO AMERICA, so I am therefore particularly sensitive to such issues.
“How can anyone claim that THE STING was a better film than CRIES AND WHISPERS?”
—I can. I saw CRIES AND WHISPERS long ago and in a dubbed version, so I need to see it again, but THE STING (not taking into account the plagiarism issue) is on par and probably even better in my mind. THE STING commits the abominable sin of being slickly entertaining and not dwelling on its more existential aspects (the power struggle among criminals, death and its defiance, loyalty, the plight of the poor, etc.) but it does include them and uses them without much noise and as context for a picaresque run that does manage to makes the audience (at least, me) empathize with the characters and care for them. By the time of CRIES AND WHISPERS, however, Bergman had begun to overdo his hatred-between-these-four-walls formula, and his film, while more artsy and prestigious for being more reflective, is not as effective and rather affected.
I may rewatch CRIES AND WHISPERS and, then, conclude that it is better than THE STING, but I do NOT expect to think it’s unthinkable to put them on the same league when comparing them, presuming one does such things as compare films.
“I may rewatch CRIES AND WHISPERS and, then, conclude that it is better than THE STING, but I do NOT expect to think it’s unthinkable to put them on the same league when comparing them, presuming one does such things as compare films.”
and then people are scratching their heads when i say i love Braindead or Zombie 2 just like Bunuel,you go Ralch ;)
“By the time of CRIES AND WHISPERS, however, Bergman had begun to overdo his hatred-between-these-four-walls formula, and his film, while more artsy and prestigious for being more reflective, is not as effective and rather affected.”
by the time of Cries and Whispers,Bergman just like with Fanny and Hour of the Wolf was becoming a manic-obsessive bastard and while it’s always interesting to watch a Bergman film,i CANNOT expect to honor these films as seminal Bergman in my book and negate a Fulci film,just like i cannot believe Kurosawa’s,Hitchcock’s and Truffaut’s should be taken rather seriously!
EDIT: i had to correct a syntax mistake.
I’ve noticed a tendency on this site to reduce a film’s complexity and beauty to a (usually negative) capsule comment. (I do it myself sometimes, in really egregious cases.)
But to say that CRIES AND WHISPERS demonstrates Bergman’s “hatred-between-these-four-walls formula” is to minimize the unhappy reality of many people stuck in those four walls. CITIZEN KANE can be described as a formulaic movie about the bad effects of an unhappy childhood, devoid of parental understanding — one of the oldest plot cliches in the book. Add THE 400 BLOWS, THE GRADUATE, HEAVENLY CREATURES, BADLANDS, JULIET OF THE SPIRITS, and hundreds of other coming-of-age movies and you’ve got one big, repeated cliche.
Similarly, THE STING can be seen as a standard-issue caper comedy. If there are only 9 stories available to be retold (Georges Polti says 33), then we have to develop critical standards and methods that account for how those same old, same old stories are told. (see the ongoing thread about objective vs. subjective criticism.)
People have every right to prefer THE STING to CRIES AND WHISPERS, which I consider less-than-seminal Bergman too. It just seems that in mentioning Oscar winners that really deserved their awards we ought to consider what the competition was in a given year.
There’s something wrong with taking Hitchcock seriously now?
@Frank
The reduction you speak of is a good point, but it was meant as a rapid way to allude to a rather formulaic dramatic structure Bergman had been repeating, even if the overall presentation is far more complex. In other words, I just used it as a tool to communicate a (starting) point, not to reduce a film to a sentence, something I also detest.
“It just seems that in mentioning Oscar winners that really deserved their awards we ought to consider what the competition was in a given year.”
it has to be finally realized that even if half of the Oscar winners are worthy not of their reward but of their cultural status,unlike most film festivals,the winners AND nominees as well represent a significant portion of the public which is (for better or for worse) stuck to an Americanized persistence of “film discussion about controversial Academy picks” whereas if we go to Venice,Cairo,Locarno etc,things aren’t much different but for some reason,always less popular.
a major example of that comparison is the 1957 Cannes Festival where some highly acclaimed names competed that year,to name a few:
Bresson
Chukhrai
Stiglic
Balling
Fellini
Kozintsev
Dassin
Wajda
only to lose from…taratatam!!!!
Friendly Persuasion by William Wyler
having appreciated Wyler’s older work (and i don’t care what anyone says about Wuthering Heights) i haven’t seen that film yet and a similar occasion happened in the Oscar years in 1976 when Rocky upset many nominees not only with its nomination but with its (encouraging for the public?) victory…
i haven’t seen Rocky either but from what i’ve heard,it was probably a post-Vietnam war healing wound for everyone to see an athletic spirit overcoming the obstacles to the top of the world!
now…wouldn’t it be nice if we’d say the same things for that 1956 Cannes Festival instead of “jerking” around whether Cries and Whispers was better than Sting when we all know Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe was “big” enough to debunk them both?
“now…wouldn’t it be nice if we’d say the same things for that 1956 Cannes Festival instead of “jerking” around whether Cries and Whispers was better than Sting when we all know Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe was “big” enough to debunk them both?”
—But, darling!, jerking around is what I enter this site for. And yes, La Grande Bouffe or Spirit of the Beehive top either Cries and Whispers or The Sting… Still, I love it when you burst into song and dance… Your choreography with that SUROGAT big-nosed dude was especially memorable.
Casablanca
Rebecca (1940)
The Apartment (1960)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
The French Connection (1971; though I prefer The Last Picture Show)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975; though I prefer Dog Day Afternoon and Nashville)
Annie Hall (1977; by far my favourite Best Picture winner)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The English Patient (1996; though I prefer Fargo)
Since the mid-90s, Million Dollar Baby, The Departed and No Country for Old Men are the only Best Picture winners I even remotely liked.
Schindlers list
Silence of the lambs
last emperor
Gandhi
Deer hunter
Annie Hall
French Connection
Midnight Cowboy
My Fair Lady
All about Eve
It happened one night
No Country for Old Men. Just the best film I saw all year and actually paid to see it 3 times :) finally the Academy gets ones right.
Yes, The Sting
The Apartment
Annie Hall
My Fair Lady
The Godfather
The Godfather, Part II
Annie Hall
Schindler’s List
The Godfather
The Godfather II
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Casablanca
Schindler’s List
Lawrence of Arabia
And some that won the Best Foreign Picture:
Fanny and Alexander
Bicycle Thieves
The Virgin Spring
La Strada
Cinema Paradiso
For me are Rebecca, All About Eve, Midnight Cowboy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kramer vs. Kramer, Schindler’s List and No Country For Old Men!
Gone with the Wind
Hamlet
Midnight Cowboy
The Deer Hunter
Annie Hall
The Silence of the Lambs
The Departed
I dug up an old thread but it was either that or have me start a new one.
apursansar
The Godfather I & II
All About Eve
Annie Hall
The Deer Hunter
The Lost Weekend
Ordinary People
The Apartment