This is one of 4 Oscar Madness showdowns running, with this one having films never nominated for an Oscar in any category square off against each other in four different time periods. All seeds and line-ups determined by the user poll data from the IMDB. Only feature-length fiction films were under consideration, and a director is limited to one film in each era.
Please make your answers legible. The deadline is Wed. July 2 at 9am PST.
1928-1947
[1] Metropolis (Lang, 1927/Germany) vs. [16] Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
[2] Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936) vs. [15] The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928/France)
[3] The Wind (Sjostrom/1928) vs. [14] The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock/1938)
[4] Show People (Vidor, 1928) vs. [13] Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)
[5] The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) vs. [12] Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933)
[6] The General (Keaton/Bruckman, 1927) vs. [11] King Kong (Cooper/Schoedsack, 1933)
[7] Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946/France) vs. [10] Olympia (Riefenstahl, 1938/Germany)
[8] Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932) vs. [9] Napoleon (Gance, 1927/France)
1948-1967
[1] The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1966) vs. [16] Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962/USSR)
[2] Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957) vs. [15] High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963/Japan)
[3] Sansho the Bailiff (Mizogushi, 1954/Japan) vs. [14] Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
[4] The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957/Sweden) vs. [13] Rififi (Dassin, 1955/France)
[5] Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) vs. [12] The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
[6] The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 1953/France) vs. [11] Kanal (Wajda, 1957/Poland)
[7] Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer, 1949) vs. [10] Rocco and His Brothers (Visconti, 1960/Italy)
[8] Los Olvidados (Bunuel, 1950/Mexico) vs. [9] Harikiri (Kobayashi, 1962/Japan)
1968-1987
[1] Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968) vs. [16] Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Hughes, 1986)
[2] The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) vs. [15] Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
[3] Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam/Jones, 1975) vs. [14] A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983)
[4] Come and See (Klimov, 1985/USSR) vs. [13] Manon of the Spring (Berri, 1986/France)
[5] The Terminator (Cameron, 1984) vs. [12] Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972/West Germany)
[6] Scarface (DePalma, 1983) vs. [11] Warriors of the Wind (Miyazaki, 1984/Japan)
[7] The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) vs. [10] Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979/USSR)
[8] Harold and Maude (Ashby, 1971) vs. [9] Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987/West Germany)
1988-2007
[1] The Professional (Besson, 1994) vs. [16] The Celebration (Vinterberg, 1998/Denmark)
[2] Sin City (Rodriguez, 2005) vs. [15] Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata, 1988/Japan)
[3] Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) vs. [14] Infernal Affairs (Mak/Lau, 2002/Hong Kong)
[4] Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001) vs. [13] Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993)
[5] Oldboy (Park, 2003/South Korea) vs. [12] Snatch (Ritchie, 2000)
[6] Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997/Japan) vs. [11] Nobody Knows (Koreeda, 2004/Japan)
[7] Time of the Gypsies (Kusturica, 1988/Yugoslavia) vs. [10] Heat (Mann, 1995)
[8] V for Vendetta (McTeigue, 2005) vs. [9] The Big Lebowski (Coen, 1998)
But that still leaves plenty of brilliant silent films, and the incredible Hawks & Lubitsch as well.