For years, I have been slowly making my way backwards through the movies that have won the Oscar for Best Picture. A few days ago I finally made my way to "Wings", the 1928 silent film that won the first such award. I then decided to rank them from best to worst. Because it is the style of this blog, I also separated them into tiers from truly great to downright terrible.
Yes, there are a handful of terrible movies on this list. But even they have something to teach us about American taste at some specific point in time.
Tier One: The Unassailable.
These are the movies that stand out to me not just for their quality but for some amount of personal resonance.
1. The Godfather (1972) 50 years on, it is still the gold standard for cinematic story telling.
2. The Godfather Part 2 (1974) There is a case for ranking 2 higher than 1. The scope is more ambitious and John Cazale's performance is the best in the history of cinema. But beat for beat, Part One is just too solid.
3. Casablanca (1943) Pour out a little for Citizen Kane, which belongs up here with the Big Boys but lost to "How Green Was My Walley."
4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) If you take anything from scrolling through this humble blog post, make it that you need to see this movie. You will not think about America in the aftermath of World War 2 the same way ever again.
5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
6. Marty (1955) A joy to watch. As light and life-affirming as anything on this list.
7. Unforgiven (1992)
8. Moonlight (2016) Roger Ebert famously said that the best movies are machines that generate empathy. The life of this movie's main character could not be more different than mine, but I felt every beat of his journey.
9. Schindler's List (1993)
10. A Man for All Seasons (1966) As history, this movie is bunk. But as drama, it will make you root for Saint Thomas Moore, even if you know all the terrible things he did in real life.
11. The Hurt Locker (2009) Still the best examination of the wars we chose to fight in this century and how little the people back home bothered to think about them.
12. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Already we have four movies about WW2 on this list.
13. The Last Emperor (1987) An underrated masterpiece.
14. Rain Man (1988) Rain Man Focus Group
15.Annie Hall (1977) Crimes and Misdemeanors is Woody's best film. Take the Money and Run might be his funniest and Midnight in Paris is probably his most entertaining. But Annie Hall is the template for everything else he did.
16. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
17. No Country for Old Men (2007)
Tier Two: The Other Classics.
18. The King's Speech (2010) The speech itself gets me every time.
19. The French Connection (1971)
20. Wings (1928) Amazing achievement in film making. And a good story too.
21. The Apartment (1960)
22. Patton (1970)
23. The Artist (2011)
24. 12 Years a Slave (2012)
25. Terms of Endearment (1983)
26. Birdman (2013)
27. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
28. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
29. Chariots of Fire (1981)
30. Dances with Wolves (1990)
31. Argo (2012)
32. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
33. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Tier Three: The Very, Very Good.
These movies are not, in the main, universally loved. Some are popcorn movies unfairly maligned for not being serious enough to deserve the Oscar. Others are overly serious movies about war. and tragedy. But they are all well made if you take them as they were intended.
34. It Happened One Night (1934)
35. On the Waterfront (1954)
36. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
37. Rocky (1976)
38. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
39. Forrest Gump (1994)
40. The Shape of Water (2017)
41. The Deer Hunter (1978) The scenes in Vietnam are salacious and dumb. But the first half of the movie is great. I would have loved to see an edit of the movie that was just set on the wedding day.
42. Ordinary People (1980)
43. Amadeus (1984)
44. Braveheart (1995) and Titanic (1997)
This is my only tie. Braveheart and Titanic belong together on this list. They are both entertaining, both are overly long and each was made to resonate with one gender more than the other. But they both work, despite being riddled with on dimensional characters and cliches.
46. Nomadland (2020)
47. Chicago (2003)
48. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Tier Four: The Good.
These are fine. But I don't need to watch them more than once.
49. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
50. The Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
51. The Lost Weekend (1945)
52. The English Patient (1996)
53. West Side Story (1961)
54. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
55. Parasite (2019) This movie is enjoyable but let's be honest, it is a bit over rated.
56. Gandhi (1982)
57. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Tier Five: Worthy But Flawed.
58. Green Book (2017) This is the only recent winner that I had not seen before the awards ceremony. The field of nominees was weak that year. Black Panther was the popular favorite but I'm not shocked that the academy avoided giving its biggest prize to a Marvel movie. Roma was expected to win but did not for reasons that remain unclear. There's a lot of tropes and it feels for stretches like a made for TV movie but the acting performances make it watchable.
59. Mrs. Miniver (1942)
60. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
61. The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
62. All About Eve (1950) Some people absolutely love this movie. I was bored at times but on a second watch, it was much better than I remembered.
63. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
64. Platoon (1986)
65. The Departed (2006) This movie being the one that finally got Martin Scorsese his Oscar is a bit like how Chuck Berry's only number one single is "My Ding-a-ling."
66. Grand Hotel (1932)
Tier Six: Gone With the Wind.
67. Gone with the Wind (1939) This movie deserves its own consideration because it is very hard to judge in 2022. I see all of its merits. The love story is great, if you overlook the scene of marital rape. And the heroine is easy to root for, if she wasn't trying to perpetuate her right to own human beings.
But I do not think this movie should be banished from the culture. You have to see this movie to understand American cinema and more importantly to appreciate the insane attitude this country had about the Civil War when most of the people who remembered it had died off.
But this movie is not just sympathetic to the South or southerners. It is wistful for a lost way of life. That way of live is the right of rich white people to own black people and make them work their land without remuneration. I can't pretend that this does not affect my reaction to the movie.
Tier Seven: The Not Quite-Good.
68. From Here to Eternity (1953)
69. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
70. Ben-Hur (1959)
71. Cimarron (1931)
72. American Beauty (1999)
73. Rebecca (1940)
74. Spotlight (2015)
75. An American in Paris (1951)
76. Going My Way (1944)
77. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
78. The Sound of Music (1965) Did I mention that I don't like musicals?
79. All the King's Men (1949)
80. Oliver! (1968)
81. Cavalcade (1933)
82. Tom Jones (1963)
83. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
84. The Broadway Melody of 1929
Tier Eight: The Bad.
85. You Can't Take it With You (1938)
86. Gladiator (2000)
87. Gigi (1958)
88. My Fair Lady (1964) Audrey Hepburn is one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. But she was a lousy actress. They were smart enough to dub her singing parts but couldn't do that for her dialog, so here we are.
90. Out of Africa (1985) I fell asleep so many times during this movie that I forced myself to watch it a second time the next day, a decision I truly regret.
91. Hamlet (1948) Laurence Olivier must have been a marvel on the stage but in 1948 he had not yet learned to stop projecting his voice for the people in the last row of the 3rd balcony.
92. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Irony.
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