Happy Oscars Week!
After over two years of steady progress and one month of intensely dedicated viewing, I’ve finally reached a major movie-watching achievement: I’ve seen every Best Picture winner ever. And what good is achieving such a masochistic milestone without an accompanying ranking? Over the course of this week, I’ll be unveiling how I size up these movies
My ground rules:
No using a movie’s age against it. There are some profoundly problematic movies on this list, of course. It’s not my job to unfairly hold it up against 2023’s morals and values to assess its worthiness. I think this kind of test is only valuable if such issues negate the film’s stated purpose.
No judging a movie against its competition. It’s not the fault of some movies that they were up against mediocre nominees, nor is it their fault if they edged out an all-time great. The competitive set here is the entire body of Best Picture winners, not every movie ever nominated.
No talk of underrated/overrated. Watching any of these movies comes with lofty expectations — it won the biggest industry prize, after all! But I will try my best to divorce expectations from my assessment because Best Picture can often be a millstone around these movies’ necks in their afterlives.
With that said, on with the show!
94. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Not just bad as a Best Picture winner — bad as a movie, period. Within minutes of beginning this movie, it nearly broke my will to continue watching every Best Picture winner. The title Around the World in 80 Days does not just refer to how long it takes David Niven's Phileas Fogg to circumnavigate the planet. It also refers to how long the duration of the movie feels like to endure. The writing is on the wall from its preposterously ponderous prologue, an Edward R. Murrow-delivered narration that includes a replay of Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (butchering the pronunciation of his name throughout). That's actually the high-water mark of cultural sensitivity in the film given the globe-trotting parade of cultural exoticism. Michael Anderson's film has no curiosity about all the places it visits beyond the ruffled feathers of a fussy old British man. Never has an epic adventure felt so dreadfully dull. (For heaven's sake, it takes 30 minutes to even begin the trip!) This grotesque collection of imperialist gawking is an absolute abomination in every sense of the word.
93. The Broadway Melody (1929)
Oof, The Broadway Melody is actively unwatchable. For a while, it's an intriguing artifact of a period in time when movies were finding their footing in the "talkies." But once you can spot the early stumbling blocks, it just keeps going on ... and on ... and veers into some problematic territory ... and goes on. Thank god that the movies quickly course-corrected and actually learned how to shoot song and dance because I don't think the medium could have sustained too many years defined by movies like this
92. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
I was promised more spectacle by Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans. Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth promises action and intrigue under the big top of a circus but is mostly just a limp backstage drama with no sense of how humans interact. Not even the great Jimmy Stewart can inject life into the dull interpersonal dynamics that make up the majority of the film's bloated runtime. And to make matters even worse, DeMille does not even deliver exciting performance setpieces — many of the film's biggest sequences take place high above the ring shot directly into the bright lights. It becomes hard to even make out the performers since they are just specs in the firmament. There's no truth in advertising with this title, but if this was necessary to give us Spielberg, I suppose it's not entirely without its merits.
91. Cimarron (1931)
The film adaptation of Edna Ferber's decade-spanning story of the Oklahoma land rush Cimarron can't quite match the sprawl of its source material. There's little to say about a film that has its eyes on the big picture but can't really gin up much excitement within individual scenes. These are, of course, the building blocks of any epic tale. It's just a listless, lifeless movie that can't even find a way to make the great Irene Dunne interesting. Perhaps there was something to hearing and seeing the great wide west on the big screen over 90 years ago, but those thrills are lost on a contemporary audience just left with its stilted drama.
90. Going My Way (1944)
As a fan of director Leo McCarey's dynamic comedic work behind the camera on Duck Soup and The Awful Truth, I couldn't help but feel great disappointment watching his turn toward religious drama with Going My Way. This tale of a young priest (Bing Crosby) coming to take over a New York City parish from an established veteran (Barry Fitzgerald) is undeniably good-hearted. It is also entirely somnambulant and a touch sanctimonious. Other than the pleasure of hearing Crosby's soothing voice, there's little to distinguish this episodic tale of people trying to make the world a touch better through Catholicism and choral music.
89. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
What an odd, uninspiring take on the biopic. The Life of Emile Zola spins its wheels for the first thirty minutes running through scenes from the title character's early years as an emerging Parisian writer which are ultimately inconsequential to the rest of the film. The meat of the action centers around Zola's infamous "J'Accuse...!" open letter (shoutout to some high-school history class for drilling this into me) accusing the French government of antisemitic retaliation against one of their own officers. The ensuing libel trial brought against Zola is meant to give the film the feel of a courtroom drama. However, the predetermined outcome and clear delineation of each side's nobility rob this often lively cinematic construction of any tension or intrigue. Director William Dieterle never establishes rising action or an escalating tone, so this whole affair about the Dreyfuss Affair feels timid and turgid. One has to wonder if it would be any better if they'd actually mentioned Judaism instead of making it an oddly unspoken subtext. (Probably not, but it wouldn't have hurt.)
88. Green Book (2018)
Cinema's "mission accomplished" banner for solving the problem of race relations. Green Book tragically misjudges its story by placing Viggo Mortensen's working-class driver at the center as he transports Mahershala Ali's effete artist across the dicey terrain of the Civil Rights-era South. Peter Ferrelly's simplistic look at racism (and not to mention homophobia) is interested first and foremost in placating the self-satisfied white audiences looking to absolve themselves of any role in the film's continued thematic relevance. Even just taken for its entertainment value, Green Book is still aggressively mediocre at best. An embarrassing Best Picture win that will forever stand as a stain on the organization's efforts to grow and diversify.
87. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
I found Mutiny on the Bounty to be completely dramatically inert. That’s a shame given that the brings together two combustible cinematic forces in Charles Laughton’s corrupt captain and Clark Gable’s kindly challenger on the high seas. But the two never really get to butt heads — or even show much in the way of active conflict. Frank Lloyd’s direction is mannered to the point of being downright sedate. Watching the film is something akin to watching a pot hearing on the stove. The old adage holds that it’ll never boil, but what they really mean is that the process seems slower if you give it your full attention. Mutiny on the Bounty quite literally never reaches its boiling point in over two hours. Pity.
86. Chariots of Fire (1981)
I'll be honest: I don't get this one. Chariots of Fire has approximately one visual idea: slowing down the sprinting of Olympic runners, abstracting their bodies to emphasize their majesty and mystery. (Not to mention underscoring them with the throbbing synth tunes of Vangelis, whose music is admittedly memorable enough to earn its clichéd status.) But director Hugh Hudson's insistence on bludgeoning the device to death robs the film of intrigue, especially when it comes to the heated competitions that form the heart of any sports movie. Everything else surrounding the races, including the class and religious drama around a striving Jew and a fervent Scottish Christian, amounts to little more than stiff, stodgy filler.
85. Gigi (1958)
In a real race to the bottom situation, Gigi may be the Best Picture winner that has aged the worst. From its opening number, a paean to young women by a leering older man, the film reeks of nasty and calcified gender dynamics. (Even Lerner and Lowe's other Best Picture-winning musical, My Fair Lady, engages in some level of self-reflection.) But this isn't just a rough watch because it feels "problematic" in modern parlance; Gigi is just unsatisfying as a movie musical. This Belle Epoque-era anti-romance between two largely indifferent Parisian parties lacks a center of gravity because it never seems to decide who the protagonist is or what its characters really want. Further, its sung portions lack any dynamism one expects from the heightened form of expression. Even grading on the curve that this is not a dance-heavy show, the numbers stop any momentum the movie manages to garner when the characters mainly stop to stand (or even sit) still to incant their notes. It's a startlingly sedate spectacle. At least Minnelli gives us something nice to look at within his frames — the man was a master at filling a widescreen vista with sumptuous Technicolor. The reds in particular really pop here.
84. Rocky (1976)
I tend to be allergic to inspirational sports dramas anyways, but Rocky especially just doesn't do it for me. No amount of Bill Conti's score can get me excited when Sylvester Stallone's prances up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps or when he claims moral victory from the mouth of boxing defeat. He thinks he's doing some kind of On the Waterfront-esque Method acting as a performer, but you can quickly observe the talent gap between Stallone and his contemporaries (much less Brando). This movie epitomizes hokey, hoary clichés at their absolute worst. Just because someone's the protagonist of a movie doesn't mean I'm going to root for him without a good justification. Gonna PASS now.
83. Hamlet (1948)
I should have liked to see Sir Laurence Olivier perform Shakespeare on stage. That seems like his medium. His cinematic take on Hamlet is so devoted to theatrical conventions that it's dead on arrival. There's enough decent camerawork to at least make the film look like more than filmed theater. Still, Olivier's directorial eye for how to stage a scene with interesting blocking or movement seems to stop at the proscenium. His inconsistent, unimaginative staging of soliloquies seems to rob them of any vitality – especially when he stages them as voice-overs. It’s nice to have this performance and style archived for the historical record, and the democratization of theater for those who could not physically or fiscally afford to see Olivier in the flesh is also noble. But beyond that, if given the choice … I choose not to be.
82. Cavalcade (1933)
“Everything passes, even time,” forlornly observed a character as Cavalcade draws to a close. “Even” is doing a lot of work there. In this adaptation of a Noël Coward play, which recounts the first third of the twentieth century through the eyes and experiences of a British household, time is about the only thing moving forward. It’s never explained or justified what makes this group of characters’ journey through turbulent history anything special or noteworthy. Say what you will about Forrest Gump, but at least that film has an angle for its point of view character. I longed for that clarity here, especially when we’re treated to observe an ill-fated conversation special only because it takes place on the deck of the Titanic. The film does come alive on the rare occasion when it abandons its theatrical origins and tries to leverage some expressionistic editing techniques to convey the carnage of the Great War. But these moments of emotional poignancy when they can capture the bewilderment of how it feels to be an individual caught within a larger collective current come too late — and far too little.
81. Marty (1955)
I must pilfer a line from The Witch in Into the Woods to describe my feelings about Marty: "You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice." What Delbert Mann's film brings to the table beyond its generosity of spirit and the humility of Ernest Borgnine's titular character is beyond me. This story of a dejected butcher and bachelor who's resigned himself to being a spinster at just 34 (oy!) only to unexpectedly find love radiates great tenderness as Marty tentatively connects with another wounded soul. But this adaptation of an early teleplay that runs just 90 minutes feels slight. We never get the chance to go deep with the characters since screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky has to churn through plot points so quickly.
80. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
An infamous early SNL sketch, “White Like Me,” featured Eddie Murphy hitting the streets in whiteface makes to observe differences in facial treatment. It’s played for laughs, of course. The content of Gentleman’s Agreement is, frankly, not entirely dissimilar. But with a straight face, the film wants you to take its observations seriously. Reader, I could not. It’s jarring to see a simplistic, silly story about how a journalist simply *decides* to present himself as Jewish to report a feature on antisemitism in any form. It’s doubly so to watch it delivered with the sturdy direction of Elia Kazan behind the camera and the nobility of Gregory Peck leading the screen. You could construct the world’s longest bridge between this movie’s intentions and its execution. I guffawed multiple times at the ludicrousness of some of the dialogue and scenarios the film wants us to see as revelatory or morally instructive.
79. Crash (2005)
It makes sense that the early-Internet era "we're all connected" hyperlink cinema finally got Best Picture recognition in the form of Crash. This series of clunkily conjoined vignettes of a multicultural Angeleno ensemble is a full bingo card of microaggressions and other prejudices lurking just underneath the surface ... ready to rear their heads when someone topples the house of cards known as "tolerance." I'll give Paul Haggis some small bit of credit for crafting some emotionally stirring scenes, but they're undercut by the wildly simplistic understanding of racism and bigotry. Say one slur? You're a racist. Show a small act of kindness to one person of a different background? You must be a Good Person and are thus absolved. The sleekness of how it all comes together glosses over the messiness of the issues it covers with all the probing intensity of an angry tweet.
78. The English Patient (1996)
Maybe The English Patient never stood a chance after all those years of watching the Seinfeld clip railing against it. (I point to this bit often when I need to explain the sensation of feeling like the only person who doesn't understand why an acclaimed movie has received such a rapturous reception.) Turns out Elaine Benes' criticisms align with my own: "It's too LONG! Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert and just DIE already!" This odd war narrative of Ralph Fiennes' pilot beginning a torrid affair with Kristin Scott Thomas' wife of a compatriot is an elongated, enervating tale of star-crossed love. It's made even more bizarre by its framing device told through a badly-burned Fiennes recounting the story to Juliette Binoche's obedient young nurse. Nothing about this movie's success makes sense to me. Like Elaine, I wish I'd just seen Sack Lunch instead.
77. A Man for All Seasons (1966)
All of the leaden staginess of the '60s studio filmmaking flop era but without any of the musical numbers! A Man for All Seasons turns the truly fascinating historical figure of Thomas More, the martyr who held firm to Catholicism when Henry VIII wanted a divorce, into a pithy and piddling bon vivant. Every once in a while, the film manages to land an interesting political or theological point. But mostly it's just a weird tonal bricolage of serious theatrical adaptation dramaturgy and rapid-fire one-liners. (Maybe it plays better with a crowd, but watching alone I frequently found myself QUITE confused as to how I should react to a given scene.) Paul Scofield's performance as More is memorable, though, if perhaps somewhat misdirected.
76. Braveheart (1995)
I suppose some level of affection from Braveheart is acceptable if it's someone's first war epic (as I suspect it might be for some of my millennial peers). But when you size this up against other winners, it's clear that Mel Gibson has seen the genre's greats but doesn't quite know how to make one himself. His tale of Scottish patriot William Wallace has all the hallmarks of a great historical drama but little understanding of how to really make them count. Wallace is too thinly sketched to be just a man and not nearly archetypal enough to enter the realm of myth. (The utterance of his final cry for freedom is outright risible.) The film also waters down the complexities of its political context into merely a blanket fight for liberty from a cabal of aloof elites. There are some impressive combat sequences, sure, but everything else around it that has to hold the film together around the fighting is quite bland — even boring, at times.
75. Gandhi (1982)
Leave it to the grandiloquent Richard Attenborough to deliver the most staid, stiff version of the Great Man biopic. Gandhi is a lazy hagiography of a figure who deserves a far more curious, human treatment than he receives here. This film never gets beyond the "what" and into the "why" of his remarkable work to free India from British colonial rule. It takes his goodness and leadership for granted, never showing how he came into possession of rhetorical and organizing skills that rallied a nation. The film does get moderately interesting towards its close when Gandhi faces internal turmoil over religious divisions between Hindus and Muslims, and I wish the film had spent more time digging into the realpolitik of it all. The sections do what the rest of the film won't — showing, not just telling us, what made Gandhi a leader.
74. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
This was an easy comparison for those looking to lament the Green Book ascendancy, but I’ll give Driving Miss Daisy the slight advantage here. At least Bruce Beresford doesn’t think he’s solving racism here. This is just a modest film with some major racial blindspots that probably should amount to more than it is. There are many genuinely disarming moments to be found in the evolving relationship between Jessica Tandy’s crotchety Miss Daisy and Morgan Freeman’s chauffeur Hoke, and those grace notes are enough to sustain a gently affecting viewing experience.
73. Grand Hotel (1932)
Grand Hotel gives away the game in its opening scene when Dr. Otternschlag observes, "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens." This cinematic ensemble comedy feels like the kind of blueprint which was necessary at the outset of the talkies ... but was quickly improved upon. That's not to say this is a bad movie, only that it's a boilerplate and largely expected one. Great performances help buoy it into something entertaining and dramatic, ranging from the seductive wiles of Greta Garbo to the earnest charms of Lionel Barrymore as the scene-stealing Kringelein.
72. Oliver! (1968)
If you squint hard enough, you can see the bubble of the Hollywood musical about to burst here. The money is practically dripping off the screen in service of this bombastic adaptation of a lukewarm Broadway show (which itself is an adaptation of Dickens). At least Carol Reed understands the power of scale in Oliver! — he knows how to cue the awe by pulling his camera back to show the massive sets and gigantic cast of extras. It's still a heartstopping sight, even if the movie's emotional core can't match that.
71. Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance (2014)
I will try my hardest not to hold a Best Picture winner's competition against it, but it's just too glaring in the case of Birdman (which I will not dignify by indulging its subtitle). Alejandro G. Iñárritu spends two hours bloviating about how impossibly taxing it is to create meaningful, human art ... while Richard Linklater showed just how it's done in Boyhood by simply letting cinema's original special effect (time) do its thing. Birdman is little more than bloviating bombast drunk on its self-importance. Iñárritu tries to convince himself that this is a manifesto rather than a screed against critics who rightfully savaged his previous film, the miserabilist mediocrity Biutiful. This is perhaps the nadir of the flashy long-take movie enabled by the switch from film stock to digital cameras. While Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography does dazzle, it serves little purpose to the story beyond a surface-level imitation of live theater's continuity. Thank goodness for the actors, particularly Edward Norton and Emma Stone, who bring some humanity and heart to a film that is otherwise lost in its own self-regard.
If you’ve read this far, or at least scrolled to the bottom, I think you can see how much work has gone into this project — and hope you will consider supporting this and all the other work on the Marshall and the Movies newsletter by becoming a paying subscriber. I have made this series free, but these kinds of tasks usually go only to the paid list. Don’t miss out on the next one!
Tune in tomorrow for Best Picture winners #70-51!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
Justice for Rocky! 🥊😩