With the BAFTAs and Oscars just around the corner, I've been thinking a lot about awards recently. As I've said before, it matters very little to the casual viewer whether or not a particular film wins a major award. The only people who benefit from awards are those directly involved in the process of making a winning film. But it's wrong to entirely dismiss awards as pointless trinkets, because in their own way awards offer a snippet of history. While eventual winners are decided by a relatively small number of people, their choices are usually (though obviously not always) indicative of public opinion. So while there have been some years where an 'upset' as occurred, in general awards are a good way of demonstrating what people liked at that particular time.

Therefore, not only is watching an award-winning film usually a pleasant experience, it's also a significant one because it gives you a glimpse of preferred tastes from the past. Of course it's always interesting to see how well some of them have aged, and as the years go by some of the more famous 'upsets' seem like even worse decisions.

So I propose to use this Feature to offer something very few review sites have. In the coming, weeks, months and maybe even years, I will update the list below with links to my reviews of every single Best Picture winner in history. This is no small task, since some winners are notoriously difficult to get hold of in the UK, and I don't have the funds to buy antique prints. But I think it will prove a useful resource and it's certainly something a little different.

Even though this is a UK site, I have decided to do this with the Academy Awards (the Oscars), rather than the BAFTAs for a number of reasons. First of all, the Academy Awards are over 20 years older than the BAFTAs, which means they cover a longer period in the history of film. Secondly, as much as the reputation of the BAFTAs has grown in recent decades, the Oscars are still the most famous and highly anticipated film awards in the world. Finally, some of the past winners of the Best Film BAFTA are even more difficult to get hold of than their Oscar-winning contemporaries. In time I may add something similar for the BAFTAs, but that's long way off.

The other thing I should mention is what appears to be a slightly odd way of dating the films. The dates below come from the system the Academy itself uses. For example, Amadeus was released in the USA in 1984 and therefore won the Best Picture Oscar of 1984, which was presented in 1985. This leads to the list appearing to be one year out of sync, but I assure you that it's not. It's also important to note that because release dates of films vary from country to country, sometimes the release date in the review itself will also appear to be off.

So please find the list of Best Picture winners below. Naturally since there are only around 200 reviews on the site at the moment it's looking pretty bare, but it will be filled in over time. To make things easier to read, I've made it so the film name also serves as the link to the review. And of course the number in brackets is simply the award/ceremony numbering.


1928 - (1st) - Wings
1929 - (2nd) - The Broadway Melody
1930 - (3rd) - All Quiet on the Western Front
1931 - (4th) - Cimarron
1932 - (5th) - Grand Hotel
1933 - (6th) - Cavalcade
1934 - (7th) - It Happened One Night
1935 - (8th) - Mutiny on the Bounty
1936 - (9th) - The Great Ziegfeld
1937 - (10th) - The Life of Emile Zola
1938 - (11th) - You Can't Take It with You
1939 - (12th) - Gone with the Wind
1940 - (13th) - Rebecca
1941 - (14th) - How Green Was My Valley
1942 - (15th) - Mrs. Miniver
1943 - (16th) - Casablanca
1944 - (17th) - Going My Way
1945 - (18th) - The Lost Weekend
1946 - (19th) - The Best Years of Our Lives
1947 - (20th) - Gentleman's Agreement
1948 - (21st) - Hamlet
1949 - (22nd) - All the King's Men
1950 - (23rd) - All About Eve
1951 - (24th) - An American in Paris
1952 - (25th) - The Greatest Show on Earth
1953 - (26th) - From Here to Eternity
1954 - (27th) - On the Waterfront
1955 - (28th) - Marty
1956 - (29th) - Around the World in Eighty Days
1957 - (30th) - The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958 - (31st) - Gigi
1959 - (32nd) - Ben-Hur
1960 - (33rd) - The Apartment
1961 - (34th) - West Side Story
1962 - (35th) - Lawrence of Arabia
1963 - (36th) - Tom Jones
1964 - (37th) - My Fair Lady
1965 - (38th) - The Sound of Music
1966 - (39th) - A Man for All Seasons
1967 - (40th) - In the Heat of the Night
1968 - (41st) - Oliver!
1969 - (42nd) - Midnight Cowboy
1970 - (43rd) - Patton
1971 - (44th) - The French Connection
1972 - (45th) - The Godfather
1973 - (46th) - The Sting
1974 - (47th) - The Godfather: Part II
1975 - (48th) - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1976 - (49th) - Rocky
1977 - (50th) - Annie Hall
1978 - (51st) - The Deer Hunter
1979 - (52nd) - Kramer vs. Kramer
1980 - (53rd) - Ordinary People
1981 - (54th) - Chariots of Fire
1982 - (55th) - Gandhi
1983 - (56th) - Terms of Endearment
1984 - (57th) - Amadeus
1985 - (58th) - Out of Africa
1986 - (59th) - Platoon
1987 - (60th) - The Last Emperor
1988 - (61st) - Rain Man
1989 - (62nd) - Driving Miss Daisy
1990 - (63rd) - Dances with Wolves
1991 - (64th) - The Silence of the Lambs
1992 - (65th) - Unforgiven
1993 - (66th) - Schindler's List
1994 - (67th) - Forrest Gump
1995 - (68th) - Braveheart
1996 - (69th) - The English Patient
1997 - (70th) - Titanic
1998 - (71st) - Shakespeare in Love
1999 - (72nd) - American Beauty
2000 - (73rd) - Gladiator
2001 - (74th) - A Beautiful Mind
2002 - (75th) - Chicago
2003 - (76th) - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2004 - (77th) - Million Dollar Baby
2005 - (78th) - Crash
2006 - (79th) - The Departed
2007 - (80th) - No Country for Old Men
2008 - (81st) - Slumdog Millionaire

© David Mercier
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