The 'Best Picture' Academy Awards
Facts & Trivia (2)
Non-Hollywood Best Pictures:
- The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) -
it was the
first non-US (Hollywood) made film to both earn a Best
Picture nomination, and win an Oscar of any sort (Best Actor
for Charles Laughton, in this case).
- Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948) - it
was the
first non-Hollywood (foreign-made)
film to win Best Picture; it was financed and filmed in England
Pulitzer-Prize and Best Picture Winners:
Only two novels that were made into films have won both the Best Picture Oscar and the Pulitzer Prize:
Back-to-Back Appearances in Best Pictures:
Only a few actors have starred in the Oscar-winning
Best Picture for two years in a row:
Appearances in Three Best Picture-Nominated Films
in the Same Year:
Only five performers have starred in three Best
Picture-nominated films in the same year:
- 1934: Claudette Colbert in
It Happened One Night (1934), Cleopatra
(1934), and Imitation of Life (1934)
- 1935: Charles Laughton in Mutiny
on the Bounty (1935), Les Miserables (1935),
and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
- 1937: Adolphe Menjou in Stage Door (1937), One
Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), and A Star is Born (1937)
- 1939: Thomas Mitchell in
Gone With The Wind (1939),
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and
Stagecoach (1939)
- 2002: John C. Reilly in Chicago (2002),
The Hours (2002), and Gangs of New York (2002)
Note: Colbert's, Laughton's, Menjou's and Mitchell's
performances came at a time when there were 10 Best Picture nominees,
while Reilly's was when there were only 5.
Best Picture Oscar Anomaly:
John Cazale appeared in only five films in his entire
career - all of which were nominated for or won Best Picture:
Box Office: Lowest Grossing Best Picture
In recent times since the advent of modern box-office
tabulations, Best Director-winning Kathryn Bigelow's The
Hurt Locker (2009) was the lowest-grossing Best Picture
winner of all time. Its domestic gross earnings were $12.6 million
at the time of its nomination, and only $14.7 million at the
time of its award. Since then, CODA (2021), with a budget
of $10 million, and total gross box-office (worldwide) revenue
of only $1.9 million, has performed even worse. It was
the first movie produced by a streaming service to win Best Picture.
Color and Black and White Best Pictures:
Gone With the Wind (1939) was the first all-color
film that won the Best Picture Oscar. [Note: Broadway Melody
(1928/29)
contained only a few sequences shot in two-color (red/green) Technicolor.]
The next four Best Picture color films were:
Schindler's List (1993) was the first black-and-white film
(although it had a few short segments in color) to win the top
award since the all B&W The Apartment
(1960). The Artist (2011) was the last entirely B/W film
to win Best Picture.
Only one Best Picture-winning film was originally
a TV comedy drama: the black and white Marty (1955).
[It was also the second Best Picture Oscar winner to also
win the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or - the first to win
the top prize was The Lost Weekend (1945).]
The first time all five Best Picture nominees
were shot in color was 1956.
The first film to be released on home video before
winning Best Picture was The Silence of the
Lambs (1991).
Foreign-Language Film Best Pictures Nominees:
It should be noted that 1956 was the first year
that the regular competitive category of Best Foreign Language Film
was introduced. Foreign-language films would no longer be recognized
with only a Special Achievement Honorary Award or with a Best Picture
nomination (as in 1938) - see below. Note: For 2019 films and
after,
the title was changed to Best International Feature Film.
The first non-English (foreign language) film to be
nominated for Best Picture was Grand Illusion (1938).
The only foreign-language (non-English language) films nominated
for Best Picture include:
- Grand Illusion (1938, France)
- Z (1969, Algeria) # *
- The Emigrants (1971/72, Sweden) [Note: This
was the only one to receive the nominations in different years
(Best Foreign Language Film in 1971, and Best Picture in 1972).
It did not win the award for Best Foreign-Language
Film.]
- Cries and Whispers (1972, Sweden)
- The Postman (Il Postino) (1995, Italy)
- Life is Beautiful (1998, Italy) # *
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Taiwan) #
*
- Amour (2012, Austria) # *
- Roma (2018, Mexico) # *
- Parasite (2019, S. Korea) # *
- Drive My Car (Jp.) (aka Doraibu mai kâ) (2021,
Japan) # *
- All Quiet on the Western Front (2022, Germ.) #
*
- The Zone of Interest (2023, UK) # *
- Emilia Pérez (2024, Fr.) #
- I'm Still Here (2024, Brazil) #
# Nominee for both Best Foreign Language Film (or
Best International Feature Film) and Best Picture in the same year
* Winner of Best Foreign Language (or Best International Feature)
Film
To date, the first and only nominated foreign-language film
to have won the Best Picture Oscar was Parasite (2019).
Eleven films have the double honor
of both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film nominations in
the same year: Z
(1969), Life
is Beautiful (1998), Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Amour (2012), Roma (2018),
Parasite (2019), Drive My Car (2021), All Quiet on the
Western Front (2022), The Zone of Interest (2023), Emilia
Perez (2024), and I'm Still Here (2024).
Bertolucci's
Chinese/Italian-produced Best Picture winner The
Last Emperor (1987) was not a Foreign-Language Film nominee.
So far, three other partly 'foreign-language' films
have won Best Picture:
The Best Foreign Language Film (Best International Film)
Category:
In 1956, the regular competitive Oscar category of Best Foreign
Language Film was introduced (the first award was actually presented
at the 29th Academy Awards ceremony held in the spring of 1957).
Beginning with 2019 films, the title was changed to Best International
Feature Film.
Foreign-language films with the most Oscar nominations
include:
- Emilia Pérez (2024) - 13 nominations
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - 10
nominations, 4 wins
- Roma (2018) - 10 nominations, 3 wins (it was the
first Mexican film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film)
- All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) - 9 nominations,
4 wins
- Life is Beautiful (1998) - 7 nominations, 3 wins
- Fanny and Alexander (1983) - 6 nominations, 4 wins
- Pan's Labyrinth (2006) -
6 nominations, 3 wins
- Das Boot (1982) - 6 nominations, 0 wins
- Parasite (2019) - 6 nominations, 4 wins
- The Zone of Interest (2023) - 5 nominations, 2
wins
- Amour (2012) - 5 nominations, 1 win
- Drive My Car (aka Doraibu mai kâ) (2021) -
4 nominations, 1 win
- I'm Still Here (2024) - 3 nominations
Currently as of 2024, Italy has the most Best Foreign Language
Film Oscars - a total of 14 Oscars (including 3 Honorary or Special
Awards), and 33 nominations.
Second
place is France with 12 Oscars (with 3 Special Awards) and 41 nominations.
Third place is Japan with 5 Oscars and 18 nominations
Fourth place is Spain
with 4 Oscars and 21 nominations.
- Mexico won its first Foreign Language Film Oscar on its 9th
nomination, for Roma (2018, Mex.).
- Parasite
(2019) marked the first nomination (and win) for South Korea.
- Only three East Asian
nations have ever won this Oscar:
- Japan (5 wins and 18 nominations) - (Three were Special
Honorary Awards from 1947-1955)
- Rashomon (1950)
- Gate of Hell (1954)
- Samurai, The Legend of Musashi (1955)
- Departures (Okuribito) (2008)
- Drive My Car (Jp.) (aka Doraibu mai kâ) (2021)
- Taiwan (1 win)
- Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
- South Korea (1 win)
The first winner
in the category of Best Foreign Language Film in the mid-1950s was
Federico Fellini's La
Strada (1956).
Italian director Fellini holds the honor of most Oscar wins (4) for
Best Foreign Language Film as a director, for:
- La Strada (1956)
- Nights of Cabiria (1957)
- 8 1/2 (1963)
- Amarcord (1974)
If Special Oscars were also considered (awarded before
the Best Foreign Language Film category was created), Fellini shares
his record of 4 wins with Italian director Vittorio De Sica, who
won Special Honorary awards for Shoeshine (1946) (win in 1947)
and The Bicycle
Thief (1948) (win in 1949), and Oscars for Yesterday, Today,
and Tomorrow (1963) (win in 1964), and The Garden
of the Finzi-Continis (1970) (win in 1971).
Besides Fellini's four Oscar wins and De Sica's two
Oscar wins, the other five Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winners
for Italy include:
- Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)
- Cinema Paradiso (1989)
- Mediterraneo (1991)
- Life is Beautiful (1998)
- The Great Beauty (2013)
The Italian film The Battle of Algiers (1966)
was the only film that earned nominations in two non-consecutive years:
- Best Foreign Language Film nominee in 1966
- Best Adapted Screenplay nominee in 1968
Best Picture Genre Biases:
There are obvious biases in the selection of Best Picture
winners by the Academy. Serious dramas or social-problem films with
weighty themes, bio-pictures (inspired by real-life individuals or events),
or films with literary pretensions are much more likely to be nominated
than "popcorn" movies. Action-adventures, suspense-thrillers,
Westerns, and comedies are mostly overlooked (although there are exceptions),
as are independent productions.
See complete Analysis
of Best Picture Genre Biases here.
Remakes (or Retellings), Sequel 'Best Pictures'
and Trilogies:
- MGM's Best Picture winner Mutiny
On the Bounty (1935) was influenced by the semi-documentary In
the Wake of the Bounty (1933, Australia) which starred
Errol Flynn in his movie debut as Fletcher Christian; both
films were based upon the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Bounty by
Nordoff and Hall; the same story was remade as Mutiny
on the Bounty (1962) with
Marlon Brando (it lost its Best Picture nomination)
- the first sequel to be nominated for
Best Picture was The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), the
sequel to the previous year's Going My Way (1944)
- Best Picture winner Ben-Hur
(1959) was a retelling/remake of the silent era's Ben-Hur:
A Tale of the Christ (1925) - both were based upon Lew Wallace's
1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
- Best Picture nominee Pygmalion (1938, UK) was
remade as the Best Picture-winning My
Fair Lady (1964)
- other examples of
Best Picture nominees (that lost) that had the same film titles:
Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven
Can Wait (1943) could be paired with Here Comes Mr.
Jordan (1941) because the latter was remade as Heaven
Can Wait (1978); Moulin Rouge (1952) (a biopic
of the painter Toulouse-Lautrec starring José Ferrer)
had the same title as Moulin
Rouge (2001) (a musical); and Best
Picture nominee The
Maltese Falcon (1941) was a remake of the 1931 version
of the same name
- Cleopatra (1934) was
remade with the same title:
Cleopatra (1963) - both were nominated for Best Picture
- three versions of Shakespeare's
tragic romantic tale were nominated for Best Picture: Romeo
and Juliet (1936), the derivative West
Side Story (1961) (a win), and Romeo
and Juliet (1968)
- the first film trilogy in Oscar history
to have all three of its movies nominated for Best Picture
was Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather pictures; the
sequel The
Godfather, Part II (1974) was also a Best Picture
winner and the first true
sequel to win Best Picture, but The
Godfather, Part III (1990) lost the Best Picture race
to Dances with Wolves (1990)
- The Silence of the Lambs
(1991) was a 'sequel' of sorts, but it was made
under a different studio, production company, director,
and set of actors
- the second film trilogy to have all three
of its parts nominated for Best Picture was Peter Jackson's The
Lord of the Rings trilogy:The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship
of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
(both lost), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
(2003) (which won Best Picture); it was the only threequel to have its third installment win the top prize
- Martin Scorsese's Best Picture crime thriller The
Departed (2006) was a quasi-remake (or sequel) inspired
by Infernal
Affairs (2002, HK)
- Toy Story 3 (2010), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Top
Gun: Maverick (2022), and Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022) were
all sequels nominated for Best Picture
- Best Picture-nominee A Star is Born (2018) was
the fourth version
of the same general story, previously made as William Wellman's
non-musical A Star is Born (1937), George Cukor's A
Star is Born (1954) starring Judy Garland, and the
Barbra Streisand musical romance A Star is Born (1976) (the
only version without a Best Picture nomination)
- Another Best Picture-nominee All Quiet on
the Western Front (2022, Germ.) from
German director Edward Berger was Netflix's remake of
the 92 year-old Oscar-winning war film from director Lewis
Milestone titled All Quiet on the Western
Front (1930) - both were based upon Erich Maria
Remarque’s
1929 classic World War I novel
Longest and Shortest:
- The longest: there was a tie between the top
two 'longest' Best Picture winners:
- the total film time (without music) of
Gone With The Wind (1939) was almost 221 minutes
(3 hours, 41 minutes), and with the Overture, Intermission,
Entr'acte, and Walkout Music, it reached 234 minutes (3
hours, 54 minutes)
- If just counting the film itself, Lawrence
of Arabia was the longest of the two contenders
- its total film time (without music)
of the "original"
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was just over 222 minutes
(3 hours, 42 minutes), slightly longer, while its additional
elements extended the film to about 232 minutes (3 hours,
52 minutes).
- The longest Best Picture nominee of all time was Cleopatra
(1963) at 320 minutes. Other lengthy Best Picture nominees included: The
Ten Commandments (1956) at 220 minutes, The Brutalist (2024) at
214 minutes, The Irishman (2019) at 209 minutes and Drive My
Car (2021, Jp.) at 179 minutes.
- Other longest Best Picture winners in order:
Ben-Hur (1959) at 212 minutes, The
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) at
201 minutes, and
The Godfather Part II (1974) at 200 minutes.
- The longest movie to
ever win an Academy Award was Russia's War and Peace
(1968) at 414 minutes, winner of Best Foreign
Language Film.
- Marty (1955) was
the shortest Best Picture winner at 91 minutes (1 hour, 31
minutes), followed by
Annie Hall (1977) at 93 minutes. The shortest Best
Picture nominee was Mae West's She
Done Him Wrong (1933)
at 66 minutes.
- Both Argo (2012) and Gigi (1958) are
tied at having the shortest Best Picture-winning
title of 4 letters. The longest title nominated for Best Picture
belongs to Stanley Kubrick's last black and white film, Dr.
Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Bomb (1964) (with 13 words)
Best Picture Winning-est Director:
William Wyler holds the record for directing more Best Picture nominees
(13) and more Best Picture winners (3) than anyone else. The nominated
and winning (marked with *) films were:
Best Picture Winners Without a Nomination for Best
Director:
- Wings (1927/8)
- Grand Hotel (1931/2)
- Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
- Argo (2012)
- Green Book (2018)
- CODA (2021)
The Winning-est and Most-Nominated Best Picture Studios: 1927/28 to 1950
From 1927/28 through the 1950 Academy Awards, the Best Picture nomination went to the production company or studio that produced the film.
The Winning-est and Most-Nominated Best Picture
Producers: 1951-present
From the 1951 Academy Awards through to the present,
the Best Picture nomination went to the individual producer(s)
credited on the film. The producer(s) credited
on the film who have received the most Best Picture nominations
(and wins) for Best Picture from 1951 to the present include:
Two Best Picture nominees in 2010, The Social
Network (2010) and True Grit (2010), were produced
by Scott Rudin, marking only the second time
since 1951 that an individual producer received two Best
Picture nominations in the same year. (Note: It also occurred
in 1974 with Francis Ford Coppola (and Fred Roos) who were honored
by receiving two Best Picture nominations in the same year,
for Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and
for their shared winner: The
Godfather (1972).)
Diversity in Producers of Best Picture Nominees:
The first female Best Picture nominee and winner
of a Best Picture Oscar was producer Julia Phillips for The Sting
(1973). Curiously, in the decade of the 1950s, none of the Best
Actress Oscar winners appeared in a Best Picture winning film!
Precious (2009) was the first-ever Best
Picture nominee to be directed by an African-American filmmaker,
Lee Daniels.
Quincy Jones was the first African-American
to be nominated as producer for a Best Picture nominee, The
Color Purple (1985). The second instance was for
Best Picture nominee Precious (2009) -- producers
for the film included Lee Daniels, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey.
Also, African-American Broderick Johnson was co-producer for Best
Pic-nominee The Blind Side (2009). Minari
(2020) was notable for producer Christina Oh becoming the first
Asian-American woman to receive a Best Picture nomination.
There are only three films in Oscar history
solely written, directed and produced by women that
received a Best Picture nomination:
- The Piano (1993, NZ), d. Jane Campion
- Winter's Bone (2010), d. Debra Granik
- Little Women (2019), d. Greta Gerwig
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