The Academy Award for Best Picture is the most prestigious award that the industry can give, even if it doesn’t always go to the right film. More often than not, the Oscars opt to award something that feels relevant at the time, even if it doesn’t end up aging well; this might explain why How Green Was My Valley beat Citizen Kane, or how The King’s Speech beat The Social Network. The difference is that while How Green Was My Valley and The King’s Speech are still worthwhile films in their own right, there are some Best Picture winners that didn’t even deserve their nominations.
The Oscars have expanded their voting body in a way that has allowed more diverse films from different genres to contend for the victory, but there is still no guarantee that a masterpiece will walk away with the top prize every year.
10
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a relatively entertaining science fiction adventure that can’t help but feel like a surface-level depiction of familial bonding, cultural legacy, and mental health; there’s no nuance to be found in a screenplay where every characters monologues about their feelings with melodramatic speeches that feel lifted directly from Internet culture. In just four years, the hot dog fingers and googley-eyed rocks have felt painfully cringe-inducing.
Everything Everywhere All At One marked the “Marvel-ification” of A24, as it began to be celebrated for its quirky ideas and freshman philosophy, instead of anything adept within the filmmaking. It’s particularly egregious that it won in the same year of The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece that tracked his own experiences reaching self-actualization as an artist, coming to terms with his Jewish identity, and reflecting upon the rift within his parents’ marriage.
9
‘Out of Africa’ (1985)
Out of Africa is the perfect example of an instance where the Oscars awarded a director, and not a film, as it was obvious that the voting members of the Academy felt the need to honor the great Sydney Pollack with what was his best chance to score a victory. Pollack is a brilliant director, but just because he deserved an Oscar for Three Days of the Condor or Jeremiah Johnson doesn’t mean that he should have won for a cloying, overlong period romance.
Out of Africa is another film that is supposedly about racial issues that only tells its story from the perspective of white characters; while both Robert Redford and Meryl Streep are individually charismatic, they have absolutely no chemistry with one another. Its win was particularly egregious in the year that Peter Weir made the crime masterpiece Witness.
8
‘Around The World in 80 Days’ (1956)
Around the World in 80 Days is the type of old-fashioned, spectacle-driven adventure that has quickly gone out of style, and no longer feels nearly as impressive because its visual breakthroughs have not held up. It’s a long ask for a film to be three hours in length when the characters are relatively boring, and Around the World in 80 Days certainly doesn’t justify its length when there are shorter films that say much more in a redacted amount of time.
Around the World in 80 Days likely won for economic reasons, as the Oscars wanted to award a truly successful piece of populist entertainment at a time when Hollywood’s future was threatened by the rise of television. Nonetheless, it still didn’t deserve the win over the epic historical romance Giant, which featured the last appearance of the great James Dean.
7
‘CODA’ (2021)
CODA is a completely regressive Best Picture winner that showed the issues of the Oscars trying to award diversity; even if it was centered around a deaf family, CODA was still told from the point-of-view of a hearing character who has to struggle with being “normal.” CODA’s Best Picture win felt particularly insidious because it began to pick up momentum in award season around the same time that there was a growing backlash to The Power of the Dog, marking the second time in two decades that the Oscars passed over a LGBTQ western for the sake of a more comforting film.
CODA was clearly not a film that the Oscars respected in terms of craft, as it wasn’t even nominated for Best Director, Best Editing, or Best Cinematography. Tonally, it feels closer to a Lifetime original than a prestige play.
6
‘Shakespeare in Love’ (1998)
Shakespeare in Love has one of the most infamous Best Picture victories of all-time because it marked the beginning of Harvey Weinstein’s impact on the Oscar race, as he had developed smear campaigns to target other films. Saving Private Ryan was a massive hit and has been hailed as one of the greatest World War II epics ever made, but Weinstein was able to convince voters that the film peaked in its opening scene, and that his romantic historical dramedy was the more entertaining nominee.
Shakespeare in Love isn’t as insightful about Shakespeare’s works as it thinks that it is, and features rather dull direction from John Madden and a completely irritating performance from Joseph Fiennes that completely drags the rest of the film down. Saving Private Ryan wasn’t even the only World War II masterpiece that was snubbed, as other nominees included The Thin Red Line and Life if Beautiful.
5
‘Cavalcade’ (1933)
Cavalcade was a relatively early Best Picture winner, which makes it somewhat understandable because the Oscars had not yet determined what types of films would be awarded with their top prize. Still, it’s hard to imagine that even audiences in the ‘30s would be blown away by the overlong, relatively boring period drama; Cavalcade explores the evolution of a British high society family over 25 years, but doesn’t commit enough to each individual timeline for any of the characters to feel memorable.
Cavalcade is the worst instance of the Oscars feeling like they needed to award an important historical document, even though the film has been forgotten within what was otherwise a fairly solid decade for Best Picture winners. To make its legacy even worse, Cavalcade was reportedly the all-time favorite film of Adolf Hitler, who screened it several times when he was Chancellor of Germany.
4
‘The Broadway Melody’ (1929)
The Broadway Melody is the first “talkie” to win Best Picture, which might be the only reason why it won. The film was a technical breakthrough that showed what the future of movie musicals would look like, but it has otherwise nothing to recommend about it; the characters are dull, the direction is flat, and even the musical numbers themselves aren’t very impressive.
The Broadway Melody won because Hollywood was trying to convince the world that the “silent” era was over, even though it would take a few more years for a genuinely great musical to emerge. It’s not even a matter of the film being affected by the passage of time; there are plenty of films from the early ‘20s that are much more entertaining than The Broadway Melody, and have far more relevance to offer to contemporary viewers.
3
‘Driving Miss Daisy’ (1989)
Driving Miss Daisy is among the most controversial Best Picture winners ever because it presented an outdated portrayal of race relations in America that offered a simple message of “why can’t we just get along?” That it won Best Picture is particularly egregious because Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee’s era-defining masterpiece, didn’t even get a nomination.
Driving Miss Daisy was still the worst of the nominees in its year, as it won over Oliver Stone’s riveting Vietnam anti-war epic Born on the Fourth of July, the moving baseball drama Field of Dreams, the brilliantly acted biopic My Left Foot, and the inspiring educational drama Dead Poet’s Society. The Oscars weren’t even particularly impressed by the direction of Driving Miss Daisy, as its filmmaker Bruce Beresford missed out on a Best Director nomination in favor of Woody Allen’s work on the psychosocial drama Crimes and Misdemeanors.
2
‘Crash’ (2005)
Crash is among the most disappointing recent Best Picture winners because it was clearly a work of “awards bait” that offered the most simplistic understanding of a complex set of modern issues. While it is admirable that Paul Haggis wanted to make a film that addressed race relations and class issues, there’s not a single character in Crash that doesn’t feel like a complete stereotype.
Crash’s victory came at the price of the presumed frontrunner, Brokeback Mountain, which had won a majority of precursors; its loss seemed to indicate the industry was still not ready to award a queer romance. Beyond Brokeback Mountain, the other nominees that year were still much better than Crash; Steven Spielberg’s thrilling spy drama Munich, the mesmerizing biopic Capote, and the powerful journalism drama Good Night, and Good Luck all would have made for deserving winners.
1
‘Cimarron’ (1931)
Cimarron is the most unwatchable Best Picture winner ever, and can really only be recommended to Oscar obsessives who have a fascination with tracking the history of the awards. It’s a dull, technically incompetent, and quite racist Western that isn’t nearly as exciting as many of the other great entries in the genre from the same decade.
Cimarron wasn’t even a big hit when it was released, making it one of the very few Best Picture winners that lost money during its initial theatrical run. While perhaps the Oscars weren’t considered to be the major, industry-promoting event that they are today, it’s still odd for the greatest prize to be handed to a film that wasn’t a success by any metric. While none of the fellow nominees are particularly regarded as classics, 1931 was still a year that included masterpieces like M and Frankenstein.
Cimarron
- Release Date
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January 26, 1931
- Runtime
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123 minutes
- Director
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Wesley Ruggles
- Writers
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Howard Estabrook
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Richard Dix
Yancey Cravat
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