Ranking all the Best Picture winners

Cafe Society
1

The Rotten Tomatoes web site has ranked each of the Best Picture winners using some semi-mysterious process. From the site:

I thought it would be interesting to review, discuss, and tear into the rankings. I assume someone will want to throw a big WTF at #11 Argo, for example.

As for me, I could debate numbers 2-85, but I am perfectly happy with #1.

Here ya go:

  1. The Godfather – 1972
  2. All About Eve – 1950
  3. Casablanca – 1942
  4. On the Waterfront – 1954
  5. An American in Paris – 1951
  6. Gone with the Wind – 1939
  7. Rebecca – 1940
  8. It Happened One Night – 1934
  9. Lawrence of Arabia – 1962
  10. The Godfather, Part II – 1974
  11. Argo – 2012
  12. The Hurt Locker – 2008
  13. The Lost Weekend – 1945
  14. The Artist – 2011
  15. Annie Hall – 1977
  16. The French Connection – 1971
  17. Marty – 1950
  18. Patton – 1970
  19. The Bridge on the River Kwai – 1957
  20. The Best Years of Our Lives – 1946
  21. Amadeus – 1984
  22. All Quiet on the Western Front – 1930
  23. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – 1975
  24. Schindler’s List – 1993
  25. Unforgiven – 1992
  26. Slumdog Millionaire – 2008
  27. No Country for Old Men – 2007
  28. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - 1927
  29. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – 2003
  30. You Can’t Take It with You – 1938
  31. West Side Story – 1961
  32. All the King’s Men – 1949
  33. The Departed – 2006
  34. The King’s Speech – 2010
  35. The Silence of the Lambs – 1991
  36. Titanic – 1997
  37. Wings – 1928
  38. The Apartment – 1960
  39. My Fair Lady – 1964
  40. Shakespeare in Love – 1998
  41. Mutiny on the Bounty – 1935
  42. The Sting – 1973
  43. Rocky – 1976
  44. The Deer Hunter – 1978
  45. Million Dollar Baby – 2004
  46. In the Heat of the Night – 1967
  47. The Last Emperor – 1987
  48. American Beauty – 1999
  49. How Green Was My Valley – 1941
  50. Midnight Cowboy – 1969
  51. Ordinary People – 1980
  52. From Here To Eternity – 1953
  53. Ben-Hur – 1959
  54. Gandhi – 1982
  55. Rain Man – 1988
  56. Chicago – 2002
  57. Mrs. Miniver – 1942
  58. Hamlet – 1948
  59. Platoon – 1986
  60. Grand Hotel – 1932
  61. The Sound of Music – 1965
  62. Terms of Endearment – 1983
  63. Chariots of Fire – 1981
  64. Kramer vs. Kramer – 1979
  65. The English Patient – 1996
  66. Oliver! – 1968
  67. Braveheart – 1995
  68. Dances with Wolves – 1990
  69. Tom Jones – 1963
  70. Gentleman’s Agreement – 1947
  71. Driving Miss Daisy – 1989
  72. A Beautiful Mind – 2001
  73. Gladiator – 2000
  74. A Man for All Seasons – 1966
  75. Crash – 2005
  76. Gigi – 1958
  77. Around the World in 80 Days – 1956
  78. Forrest Gump – 1994
  79. Going My Way – 1944
  80. The Life of Emile Zola – 1937
  81. Cavalcade – 1933
  82. The Great Ziegfeld – 1936
  83. Out of Africa – 1985
  84. Cimarron – 1931
  85. The Greatest Show on Earth – 1952
  86. The Broadway Melody – 1929
2

These kinds of lists are always going to be tricky for a lot of people, because they mix the entire list from all time periods. A movie made 70 years ago is so fundamentally different than one made in 1987, it’s impossible for someone who is not a movie fanatic to make sense of this kind of ranking. I’m having the same problem in the “character actor” thread.

I don’t care for old movies. They are too dramatic and stage-y to someone like me, who started watching movies in 1983. So I look at a list like this, and think “Seriously? All About Eve is better than Rainman?” And it makes me think of movie snobs that automatically worship any “classic” (not directing that at anyone here).

It may make more sense to split lists like this into eras, maybe even just pre- and post-1967 (?) to account for such a dramatic (ha!) change in how movies are paced and plotted.

3

How many of the 86 movies have you seen? There are some older films on that list that are rarely shown even on TCM. For example, how often has Broadway Melody been aired?

4

Well, right off the bat The Lost Weekend is way too high.

Of course, that was sort of the problem within the film, too, as I recall.

5

I think their formula has less data to draw from for ranking the newer films- which skews the results. 2012 is, as you noted, at #11 while 2009 is at #12 and 2011 is at #14.

6

This is all in my opinion, of course. The top third of the list looks pretty good, actually. I didn’t like The Hurt Locker, but other than that I would only quibble about the ordering. (I would put both Amadeus and Schindler’s List a lot higher. Also, West Side Story is one of my all time favorite movies, and has been for decades, so it’s another I would have rated higher.)

But movies in the bottom third of that list that I liked, so should have been rated higher, are:

  1. Oliver! – 1968
  2. A Beautiful Mind – 2001
  3. A Man for All Seasons – 1966
  4. The Life of Emile Zola – 1937

There are a lot of movies in the middle of the list that I’m very meh about. I kind of like them, but I don’t love them.

7

Not really sure why you’re asking, but I have seen all but five.
mmm

ETA: Yes, I’ve seen Broadway Melody; thought it was awful.

8

Actually, I’d put *All About Eve *at #1 . . . and I’m not even a movie snob.

And where is Inherit the Wind ?

9

The List ranks the 86* Films that were awarded Best Picture (or the equivilent award- the title of the award has changed throughout the years).
Inherit The Wind didn’t win Best Picture (it wasn’t even nominated).

*Though this most recent ceremony was only the 85th, there are 86 films on the list. This is because the list counts both Sunrise and Wings.
At the first Academy Awards, there were two different categories both of which were equally considered to be the “Top Prize”. Sunrise was awarded “Unique and Artistic Production” while Wings was awarded “Outstanding Picture”.

10

I would put lower:

An American in Paris (5)
Argo (11)
The Hurt Locker (12)
The Departed (33)
Wings (37)
Gladiator (73)

I would put **much lower:

Gone with the Wind (6)
The Artist (14)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (29)
Chicago (56)
The Sound of Music (61)

I would put higher:

The Godfather, Part II (10)
Marty (17)
The Best Years of Our Lives (20)
Mutiny on the Bounty (41)
Rocky (43)
Gentleman’s Agreement (70)

I would put **much higher:

Schindler’s List (24)
The Apartment (38)
The Deer Hunter (44)
How Green Was My Valley (49)
The Life of Emile Zola (80)

For the record, I have not seen:

    The Last Emperor (47)	
    Tom Jones (69) 
A Man For All Seasons (74)
The Great Ziegfeld (82)
The Greatest Show on Earth (85)
11

Impossible to make a list with application beyond an individual. For example, the initial list has “Broadway Melody” at dead last, whereas I would rank it higher than any winner in the last 20 years, which themselves would all appear in the bottom half.

Lists like this only say, “I like my pie, not your pie!”

12

I don’t disagree.

But I see nothing wrong with comparing pies. :slight_smile:
mmm

13

The Broadway Melody deserves its ranking. Even for its time, it was not a top-rank film, but the Oscars in the 30s were basically rigged – voters were pressured to vote for their own studio’s films and the major studios had a tacit agreement to spread the awards around. The voting became more independent in the 40s but didn’t eliminate studio interference until it was broadcast and the TV networks paid for the award show instead of the studios.

The Greatest Show on Earth is surprisingly good. Given the nominees in 1952, only High Noon would have been a clearly better choice.

Argo, OTOH is rated too high. One of the problems with the IMDB rankings is that it favors new films over older ones. As time goes by, Argo’s critical consensus will drop (though it will still be considered a good movie).

I also think The French Connection is overrated. Too many plot problems.

Crash deserves to be much higher. Most people misunderstood the point of the film, and the interplay of characters – as well as their depth – made it a clearly great film. It’s one of the best choices the academy made. Same with Shakespeare in Love, whose screenplay was one of the cleverest in the history of film.

Other than that, it’s all fine tuning and the difference of fifteen places up or down is meaningless.

14

In that case, my pie:

Best 10:

Casablanca – 1942
All About Eve – 1950
It Happened One Night – 1934

HUGE GAP

West Side Story – 1961
The Deer Hunter – 1978
In the Heat of the Night – 1967
The Sound of Music – 1965
Gentleman’s Agreement – 1947
My Fair Lady – 1964
A Man for All Seasons – 1966

[COLOR=“Red”]Worst 10:

The Departed – 2006 (possibly the worst movie ever made)
Oliver! – 1968

HUGE GAP

Argo – 2012
Titanic – 1997
Unforgiven – 1992
Shakespeare in Love – 1998
Rocky – 1976
Rain Man – 1988
Braveheart – 1995
The Silence of the Lambs – 1991[/COLOR]

15

I’ll just rate a personal top 10 (in no particular order), and leave it at that:

The Godfather – 1972
Casablanca – 1942
Lawrence of Arabia – 1962
The French Connection – 1971
The Bridge on the River Kwai – 1957
The Best Years of Our Lives – 1946
Amadeus – 1984
No Country for Old Men – 2007
In the Heat of the Night – 1967
From Here To Eternity – 1953

I’ve not seen maybe 20% of the films on the list, but I’m pretty sure having seen them would not change my top ten significantly.

Like others, I find it hard to rate most films made earlier than the mid-fifties due to the stagy acting styles and glaring technical limitations imposed on the medium.