With the Oscars around the corner (March 4th) and the recent announcement of the Oscar nominees, we decided to make the prompt for February be about Best Picture winners.
89 films received this recognition. Are they the best and the greatest films of their time? Highly subjective, but I do believe they reflect the times of Hollywood and cinema, maybe not the best of times but they show some small evolution in film making. I was surprised to remember how many of my personal favorite films were actually Best Picture winners such as Marty, The Apartment, The Lost Weekend and The French Connection.
I believe the Oscars had a big impact on guiding me to certain films and helped me access the large and vast world of cinema. Let’s face it, there are a ton of movies and this was one way for me to find “the best of the best.” I look forward to the Oscars, mainly for the debate between cinephiles and the bridge it creates to discuss movies with non-cinephiles. I probably can’t have a deep conversation about mother! with co-workers but thanks to the nominations I can talk about Get Out or The Shape of Water.
When compiling the list of Best Picture winners I was expecting my number of unwatched films to significantly outweigh the number of watched, instead it was 45 unwatched and 44 seen, simply 50/50. I can thank TCM for their 31 Days of Oscar programming during high school for helping me knock out a lot of these films. I hope to have multiple picks for the month but for right now I’m going to choose one and it will be 1927/28’s Best Picture winner and the first film to receive the award, Wings. I have two reasons for picking this film, it was the first film to obtain the honor and I recently read that Rian Johnson had a tribute/homage to it in a scene from Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Pick an unwatched Best Picture from the table below and let us know by email (cinemashame@gmail.com) or tweet us (@CinemaShame) with your choice. Happy Cinema Watching!
| Year | Best Picture Winner |
| 1927 | Wings |
| 1928 | The Broadway Melody |
| 1929 | All Quiet on the Western Front |
| 1930 | Cimarron |
| 1931 | Grand Hotel |
| 1932 | Cavalcade |
| 1934 | It Happened One Night |
| 1935 | Mutiny on the Bounty |
| 1936 | The Great Ziegfeld |
| 1937 | The Life of Emile Zola |
| 1938 | You Can’t Take It With You |
| 1939 | Gone with the Wind |
| 1940 | Rebecca |
| 1941 | How Green Was My Valley |
| 1942 | Mrs. Miniver |
| 1943 | Casablanca |
| 1944 | Going My Way |
| 1945 | The Lost Weekend |
| 1946 | The Best Years of Our Lives |
| 1947 | Gentleman’s Agreement |
| 1948 | Hamlet |
| 1949 | All the King’s Men |
| 1950 | All About Eve |
| 1951 | An American in Paris |
| 1952 | The Greatest Show on Earth |
| 1953 | From Here to Eternity |
| 1954 | On the Waterfront |
| 1955 | Marty |
| 1956 | Around the World in 80 Days |
| 1957 | The Bridge on the River Kwai |
| 1958 | Gigi |
| 1959 | Ben-Hur |
| 1960 | The Apartment |
| 1961 | West Side Story |
| 1962 | Lawrence of Arabia |
| 1963 | Tom Jones |
| 1964 | My Fair Lady |
| 1965 | The Sound of Music |
| 1966 | A Man for All Season |
| 1967 | In the Heat of the Night |
| 1968 | Oliver! |
| 1969 | Midnight Cowboy |
| 1970 | Patton |
| 1971 | The French Connection |
| 1972 | The Godfather |
| 1973 | The Sting |
| 1974 | The Godfather Part II |
| 1975 | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest |
| 1976 | Rocky |
| 1977 | Annie Hall |
| 1978 | The Deer Hunter |
| 1979 | Kramer vs. Kramer |
| 1980 | Ordinary People |
| 1981 | Chariots of Fire |
| 1982 | Gandhi |
| 1983 | Terms of Endearment |
| 1984 | Amadeus |
| 1985 | Out of Africa |
| 1986 | Platoon |
| 1987 | The Last Emperor |
| 1988 | Rain Man |
| 1989 | Driving Miss Daisy |
| 1990 | Dances with Wolves |
| 1991 | The Silence of the Lambs |
| 1992 | Unforgiven |
| 1993 | Schindler’s List |
| 1994 | Forrest Gump |
| 1995 | Braveheart |
| 1996 | The English Patient |
| 1997 | Titantic |
| 1998 | Shakespeare in Love |
| 1999 | American Beauty |
| 2000 | Gladiator |
| 2001 | A Beautiful Mind |
| 2002 | Chicago |
| 2003 |
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
|
| 2004 | Million Dollar Baby |
| 2005 | Crash |
| 2006 | The Departed |
| 2007 | No Country for Old Men |
| 2008 | Slumdog Millionaire |
| 2009 | The Hurt Locker |
| 2010 | The King’s Speech |
| 2011 | The Artist |
| 2012 | Argo |
| 2013 | 12 Years a Slave |
| 2014 | Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) |
| 2015 | Spotlight |
| 2016 | Moonlight |
–Nick Britt
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