The Best Films That Never Won a Best Picture Oscar

FILM SCHOOL REJECTS ^ | February 18, 2008 | Maggie Van Ostrand

[uncitizen]

We can hope our favorite movie will come away with the big prize, but in the long run, some of the best pictures ever made did not receive Best Picture Oscars. A good example would be the AFI’s choice for number one movie of all time, Citizen Kane.

[neb52]

The winners list is a mix bag since 1994. Some are really bad and others a legendary. Chicago?.....I mean really! Come on. I don’t have anything against musicals, but I don’t think I could consider one every to be worthy of the BMP. Gladiator and Braveheart are up there as my most favored.

[uncitizen]

Hold on there a minute fella. The Wizard of Oz lost because it was up against Gone With the Wind. Oz was a great movie but not quite as great as GWTW. Anyway, Oz took all the music categories that year.

[uncitizen]

well now, that is interesting isn’t it....

[uncitizen]

You think “Star Wars” was a better film than “Annie Hall?”

yes.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I’ve never understood why Citizen Kane is so highly rated. Can anyone explain?

---

I’ve tried to sit through CK once or twice and inevitably fell asleep. So on the one hand I agree with you.

So why is it so highly regarded. One reason is historico-technical. Orson Welles broke all sorts of new technical ground in that movie, I can’t recite chapter and verse what all he did, but things like how he set his shots up, to maybe what process he used for the film - I’m not entirely sure. A good musical analogy might well be Sergeant Pepper by the Beatles. To film buffs there are films made before CK and films made after. Just as for rock music SP is a watershed event. They did things in the album both technically as well as artistically that just redefined the musical landscape.

The trouble is that that doesn’t necessarily translate into a film (or an album) that is fun to watch 40 or 50 years later.

I think the second notion is that Welles was revered by the artistic types in Hollywood in perhaps the same way that Brando always was. If you were an actor at the time, you probably thought of Brando as the guy with more raw talent than any six people combined. Same with the young Welles. These guys were the enfant terribles of their time, personally difficult, but loaded with talent that no one in the business could ever deny. So some of the reverence for CK is also, I think, reverence for the guy that made it.

I’m sure there are those that would say it’s a fantastic movie, for this that and the other reason, and I’m not going to say it’s not - I’ll just say it put me to sleep.

[mad_as_he$$]

The English Patient and Titanic automatically make your opinion invalid. Both were like wathcing paint dry.!!!!!! :-)

[mad_as_he$$]

I think Star Wars was better than almost all Woody movies.

[uncitizen]

I think Star Wars was better than almost all Woody movies. put together.

[mad_as_he$$]

lol thanks for fixing it!!

[uncitizen]

LOL! You’re welcome.

[steelyourfaith]

"An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore's global warming scamumentary, won two Oscars.

Can't be bothered taking notice of the Academy Awards, which, anyway, never were anything other than capitalistic promotion of the movie industry, the crummy limousine liberal hypocrites.

[uncitizen]

I know all that. This is just to have some fun discussing our favorite movies.

[steelyourfaith]

"I know all that. This is just to have some fun discussing our favorite movies.

Oh. Okay.

In that case I would include High Noon, Shane, Last of the Mohicans (never even nominated for Pete's sake), Jerry MaGuire, Chinatown, Wuthering Heights & Wizard of Oz (but there were so many fine films in 1939)...

Great thread.

[Dante3]

I do not understand it either. I am one of those rare individuals who could not get past the first fifteen minutes of “Citizen Kane.”

[uncitizen]

That’s more like it!

[uncitizen]

Jerrry Ma-guiire. The only Tom Cruise movie that i liked, except for “War of the Worlds”.

[uncitizen]

Want to mention Driving Miss Daisy. It wasn’t a loser. It won in 1989 and deservedly so. But i put it out there just because it’s one of my faves.

[steelyourfaith]

Well I liked "Risky Business" and "All the Right Moves", from early in Cruise's career. "Top Gun" was okay. None of them worthy of an Oscar though.

Other than "Jerry Maguire" in recent years I pretty much avoid Tom's flicks, because I find it difficult to get into a movie when I know too much about the real life person on the screen.

[uncitizen]

...I find it difficult to get into a movie when I know too much about the real life person on the screen.

Me too.

[ought-six]

1) The Searchers (arguably the best Western ever);
2) Shawshank Redemption (the best thing ever to come out of Steven King’s pen);
3) To Kill a Mockingbird (just a great film);
4) The Quiet Man (everyone is Irish when watching and enjoying this wonderful film);
5) High Noon (Great story; great theme song; Cooper at his very best; Grace Kelly, demurely seductive, rises to the occasion by abandoning her strong pacifist beliefs to save the life of her husband by shooting a bad guy in the back, and clawing the eyes of another just as he was about to kill him);
6) The Wizard of Oz (pure magic);
7) The Wild Bunch (Gritty, gutsy, pushing the envelope “kick-ass” movie that transitioned filmaking from illusion to reality; the seminal “blood and guts” movie that actually had a terrific story line, and some stellar performances from such talented folks as William Holden, Robert Ryan, Edmund O’Brien, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, etc.);
8) The Unforgiven (Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn; like “The Searchers”, a terrific story by author Alan LeMay);
9) The Treasure of Sierra Madre (Bogart’s descent into madness was chilling; great story; great direction by John Huston, who directed his father Walter in this splendid film);
10) Afican Queen (Bogart again, this time as the besotted riverscow skipper Charlie Allnut saddled with the evangelical prude Rose Sayer, played by Katharine Hepburn, in a wild ride down an always unpredictable African river during WWI);
11) Stalag 17 (”The Great Escape” without the scenery, but truly gripping);
12) Saving Private Ryan (the best D-Day movie ever);
13) Empire of the Sun (Spielberg’s best; the very best performance by a kid ever in Christian Bale’s “Jamie”; John Malkovich was, well, John Malkovich, with another superb performance);
14) Alive (feeling hungry will never be the same);
15) Bite the Bullet (I will never grow tired of watching this excellent movie of a horse race across the West by a roster of cast-offs and misfits hoping for glory and a buck; Gene Hackman and James Coburn as ex-Roughriders whose time and way of life have come and gone with nothing to show for it but scars and memories was fun to watch; and the classically beautiful Candace Bergen as the on-again/off-again hooker whose goal isn’t the money or the glory, but rather the break-out of her no-good lover from a prison chain gang, upon whom she finally realizes she has wasted her best days).

And, the movie that should have won an Oscar for Best Picture but for the fact it was never released in the theaters, but was a made-for-TV mini-series: “Lonesome Dove.”