We’ve made it to the midway point of my Best Picture ranking!
Now the decisions start getting much, much tougher. Are you ready to find out what’s in this middle tier? Read on to learn!
CATCH UP ON THE COUNTDOWN
Part 1: #94-71
Part 2: #70-51
50. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
The biggest issue here is that this memory piece can't decide if it's a coming-of-age story about a young man in a Welsh mining community ... or about that community itself. But even as it's indecisive, John Ford still manages to exemplify early Hollywood storytelling at its most beautiful (and occasionally bludgeoning) in How Green Was My Valley. The man knew how to frame a shot and block his actors like few others in his day. Even if the characters themselves lack some dimension, the way he places them in front of his camera always makes them fascinating if you can take a step back from the emotion and admire the composition.
49. Wings (1928)
This had to be the Top Gun: Maverick of its time — and remarkably, nearly a century later, the aerial photography of Wings still thrills. Director William Wellman’s aerial combat experience shows as the film leaps through the skies in dizzying, dazzling fashion. It’s in these battle sequences that the film soars. The shoehorned addition of Clara Bow, Paramount’s biggest star, as a romantic lead for the two leading pilots to vie over simply cannot hold a candle to its feature attraction. But even when Wings is more earthbound as a film, it still manages to showcase an impressive language of visual storytelling. The only true silent Best Picture winner is a reminder that no spoken dialogue in movies meant the shots had to do all the talking — and here, they say a screenplay’s worth.
48. The Sting (1973)
I always love a con artist movie that can successfully make a mark out of its audience, and The Sting delivers all the fun one would expect from the genre. Director George Roy Hill is a consummate entertainer, and this tale of a young grifter (Robert Redford) looking for vengeance for his fallen partner alongside an aging veteran in the field (Paul Newman) is enjoyable to watch unfold through its final twist. (I think I underrated just how far having a great villain in Robert Shaw's smug mob boss goes in propelling this film forward.) But each time I revisit the film, I'm always struck by how much more I want to see Redford and Newman together. The film comes alive the most when it puts their oddly complimentary energies together, yet they operate on more distinct narrative tracks in the film than it might seem. It's the rare film I think could actually be longer if it meant getting additional time to watch Butch and Sundance chop it up.
47. The Shape of Water (2017)
In retrospect, it’s still pretty wild that the movie about a mute woman horned up for a fish monster was considered a “safe” choice for Best Picture in 2017. Guillermo del Toro captures the magic of fairy tale lore in The Shape of Water, refracting contemporary concerns over identity, acceptance, and belonging through a Kennedy-era story of a government worker who sees an alien creature as something to love rather than fear. del Toro’s screenplay bites off a little more than it can chew with some subplots and supporting character arcs that don’t quite land, but the core of the film is powerful in both sincerity and spectacle.
46. The Deer Hunter (1978)
I still struggle with the length of The Deer Hunter. The three-hour film feels befitting a true war epic, and Michael Cimino's tale navigating both the homefront in America and the moral morass of Vietnam has a much more intimate feel. His astutely observed small details of human interaction, especially during the film's notoriously lengthy wedding sequence at the outset, help show the delicate interweaving of the relationships that form a tight-knit Pennsylvania town. This understanding becomes necessary to demonstrate the quietly corrosive effects of Vietnam on their collective psyche. It's a rot that goes far deeper than most films care to perceive, and kudos to Cimino for not bending this amorphous sense of disillusionment into a more traditional narrative structure. The themes linger, even when some bits of the film loiter a bit too long.
45. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
As far as interracial buddy movies with offbeat politics go, In the Heat of the Night ranks at the top thanks to the two dynamite leading performances of Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The film whiffs a bit on some of the broader strokes of race relations, but when Norman Jewison lingers a little longer than you’d expect on one of the stars, there are many revelatory details that come to light. It’s always entertaining as a murder mystery and police procedural, too, and gets elevated by uncommonly great craftsmanship courtesy of cinematographer Haskell Wexler and editor Hal Ashby.
44. Tom Jones (1963)
This side of Annie Hall, I’m not sure there’s a funnier Best Picture winner than Tom Jones. I was frankly shocked that a satirical comedy this ribald and raucous could come from Tony Richardson, the director perhaps best known for his kitchen sink realism in A Taste of Honey. Here’s to versatility! It’s possible that Tom Jones is perhaps TOO funny for its own good, always opting to go big and broad with its humorous skewering of the British upper crust — often at the expense of character development. Richardson’s open contempt and mockery for the nobility leads the film in such wild directions to provide its bona fides that Tom Jones frequently falls victim to what Mike Nichols coined “the expensive laugh.” (That is, the joke that came at the cost of believability, consistency, or emotional honesty.) From the cheeky, self-aware narration to the fourth wall breaks, it’s just a smidge too clever for its own good and keeps the audience at arm’s distance. (Maybe it just wants to avoid getting sprayed by an unexpected laugh?!) The formal inventiveness, along with the incandescent impishness of leading man Albert Finney, buoys the picaresque adventure of a dashing British bastard gliding by on a winning personality even when the story lags a bit.
43. Rebecca (1940)
A deeply random film to represent Alfred Hitchcock among Best Picture winners (and the Master of Suspense famously never won an Oscar himself). Rebecca is no one’s idea of a bad movie — this Gothic thriller has all the handsome craftsmanship and attention to aesthetics that define a Hitchcock movie. It’s just that the film never quite gets to fly its psychological freak flag and embrace the inner strange of its creator. Olivier and Fontaine as the film’s would-be lovers are a bit too stilted to really penetrate the dark heart of this story about a blushing bride and a sinister widower. Perhaps super-producer David O. Selznick put Hitchcock in a straightjacket with his insistence on a faithful adaptation, too. The film feels mired in a number of domestic scenes and legalistic proceedings that feel like the kind of leaden material he usually avoided (clearly for good reason).
42. West Side Story (1961)
Among the wave of big-screen musicals that dominated this category in the ‘60s, West Side Story is the one that best captures something uniquely cinematic in its source material. The moments when Robbins/Wise leverage the expressionistic capabilities of the medium are where the movie shines. For most of the rest of the musical, though, it’s remarkable how frequently the camera is in the most obvious and uninspiring location. (It doesn’t help that the Spielberg remake really highlights just how much can be done to make the numbers come to life.) The brilliance of the source material and the genuine passion falling off the screen helps distract from how the film is serviceably constructed by craftsmen who don’t really know how to make a movie. Still, when the camera glides heavenward and allows us to take in the complex choreographic language, it’s hard not to swoon.
41. Mrs. Miniver (1942)
It’s really a testament to how great a filmmaker William Wyler is that Mrs. Miniver can rank as high as it does despite being patently ridiculous at times. This piece of Allied agitprop, released while the full contours of World War II, were far from established feels both too soon and too silly. Maybe it’s the era’s version of cringe resistance art, yet I was tremendously moved all the same because Wyler knows exactly where to put the camera for maximum impact in this story of an ordinary British woman experiencing the conflict from the home front. Wyler’s handiwork is never lavish or flashy, and his imagery is all the more arresting for being so unsuspecting. It’s these kinds of gobsmacking compositions that filmmakers really should be studying, but I digress. These shots are all the more powerful because he fills them with tremendous performances as well, especially from young Teresa Wright as a young war bride.
40. On the Waterfront (1954)
I have a sinking sensation that On the Waterfront might be one of those films I might "appreciate" more than I really "love." It's not that I don't think Elia Kazan's whistleblower drama isn't good — it's gripping cinema, anchored in a history-making turn by Marlon Brando. Labor relations have rarely been rendered so vividly and excitingly. But I think I feel a bit of friction between some of the more melodramatic elements of this underdog story and the gritty, grounded performance style of its leading man. Even if Kazan mostly matches the psychological realism of Brando, something still feels like it resides in the uncanny valley of representation to me.
39. Argo (2012)
Among the early-teens period of self-congratulatory "Hollywood is helping!" Best Picture winners, Argo easily takes the cake. It's not just art for art's sake but a celebration of the collaboration it takes to make a movie – and a demonstration of how widely that skillset is applicable. Ben Affleck's film grippingly recounts the untold story of how the CIA used a fake movie production as a front to rescue American hostages captured from Iran in 1979. It's a film easy to foil against the emerging Marvel model that emerged the same year and say "they don't make 'em like this anymore." OK, they did, and Argo deserves to be judged for what it is more than what the movies around it are not. Affleck seamlessly recreates the look and feel of the era's political thrillers, providing a period-appropriate reason for the throwback feel. It's a pulse-pounding ride that connects at every moment while still managing to feel somewhat disposable after.
38. Forrest Gump (1994)
This is the rare film that I think both critics and fans get wrong. Forrest Gump is far more sophisticated than the hokey schmaltz for which people both dog it and celebrate it. This ambling odyssey of the titular character, a modest Alabamian of overflowing heart yet limited intelligence, is perhaps a little too quiet with its ironic bent. It’s both a little bit inspiring and a little bit frightening that Forrest can find himself in the way of history and success. Perhaps Robert Zemeckis ties up the package a little too neatly, but his film provides quite the X-Ray of the American Dream. The concept is vindicated by showing that, yes, anyone can rise in the United States. The concept is undermined by showing that chance, not hard work, is often the driving force behind such an ascent. There’s more here than just the greatest hits of the American Century, should people really want to pore over the complexities lurking just under the surface.
37. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Some of Clint Eastwood's more recent public appearances (the empty chair at the RNC, finger-wagging against "the pussy generation") have crafted a persona at odds with the kinds of films he actually makes. His portraits of hardscrabble humanity like Million Dollar Baby are about as earnestly sentimental as they come without crossing the rubicon of corniness. Eastwood suffuses this trainer-boxer tale, which also doubles as a surrogate father-daughter narrative, with all the complexities of guilt, regret, and longing. These wistful forces butt heads with the triumphalist strivings of Hilary Swank's fighting Maggie, who scraps for the very things he scorns. The film can feel a bit overwritten, especially when it relies on Morgan Freeman's Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris to spoon-feed the philosophical stakes of a scene. But the overwhelming force is not that of Paul Haggis' script but of Eastwood's soulful direction, at its best when pared back to such an extent to reveal the simplest and sincerest form of any feeling. The film's final act remains a bruising gut punch, even when you know what's coming.
36. It Happened One Night (1934)
Each time I watch It Happened One Night, I always expect it to be a tiny bit better than I find it. There is any number of screwball-era comedies that I think are probably a more deserving standard-bearer than this romp between Claudette Colbert's fleeing heiress and Clark Gable's newspaper reporter hunting her down. (Maybe it's just a case of the imitators tarnishing the original template.) Yet each rewatch has also worn me down a bit, teaching me to enjoy the little moments of incidental humor and heart that Frank Capra is so great at orchestrating. And, let's be honest, the wall of Jericho kicker remains one of the great movie endings. Take that, Hays Code!
35. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
I think I find the film’s framing device, a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? where the life experiences of contestant Jamal (Dev Patel) give him a preternatural edge in gleaning the correct answers, a little bit of a convenient contrivance. Nonetheless, it's still a clever way for Slumdog Millionaire to give us all the joy of the rags-to-riches narrative without necessarily hitting all the usual plot beats in a conventional order. Kudos to screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and director Danny Boyle for making a film that’s kinetic and lively as it cuts between multiple storylines without being confusing or jarring. The film nimbly balances the game, the flashbacks that span the geography and recent history of India, and the drama that plays out behind the scenes as the show’s producers doubt lowly “phone basher” Jamal’s ability to get as far as he does. There's also just such a buoyant humanism animating the film from the very beginning, which is necessary for Boyle to sell the grand emotional finale that asks us to believe the improbable.
34. Ordinary People (1980)
You can really sense that an actor as great as Robert Redford had to direct Ordinary People, a domestic drama about a family going through their separate processes of grieving the loss of a teenage child. It certainly helps that Alvin Sargent's screenplay avoids mawkish cliches, but this is a film that sings thanks to actors who get the space and security to go deep into their processes. Redford's patient pacing allows Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, and Timothy Hutton to marinate a moment rather than having to milk it for melodrama. The look and style feel deliberately plain so as not to pull focus from the performers — perhaps a privilege enjoyed by Redford as a relatively early actor-turned-director to not make it more self-consciously artful to dispel the doubters. This is the best possible version of a movie like this, but that ceiling of quality is not necessarily up in the stratosphere.
33. All About Eve (1950)
I've felt somewhat at arm's length from All About Eve both times I've watched it. Is it possible that the films inspired by Joseph L. Mankiewicz's actor-driven melodrama, such as Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother have found more emotionally and narratively potent ways of exploring the same themes and story beats? Nonetheless, there's still plenty to like here – first and foremost, the performances. While Bette Davis' aging actress Margot Channing is a delicious reminder that no one comes close to dethroning her as queen of camp, the MVP here may well be Celeste Holm as her friend and confidante Karen. Her character is the crucial lynchpin holding together the fading glory of Margot and the ascendancy of Anne Baxter's Eve Harrington, a young actress whose humble admiration of Margot masks a more cunning sense of cutthroat ambition. The myriad maneuvers within All About Eve vibrantly capture the inherent contradiction in the parasitically twinned forces of stardom and fandom. Contained within the desire to respect a star is the desire to replace them.
32. Unforgiven (1992)
I wonder if Clint Eastwood sensed he still had at least three decades of moviemaking left in him when he made Unforgiven, a revisionist Western that has all the hallmarks of a director's parting shot. This is a film unafraid to speak the subtext undergirding an entire genre and its philosophy around violence and the value of human life. As a cast full of aging gunslingers approach their various moral redlines, Eastwood finds riveting tension by simply exploring the ones they will and won't cross. He looks under the hood of machismo and masculinity, creating the backdrop against which his grizzled outlaw can simply utter the phrase "I'm afraid of dying" and make it feel freighted with meaning. He's the poet laureate of the plainspoken.
31. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
I find this one a bit tough to assess because it’s clearly an award honoring the collective work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, not just its culminating installment The Return of the King. For all these years of giving it chance after chance to blow me away, my stance remains largely the same: I’m blown away by Peter Jackson’s sprawling canvas even if I can’t quite get invested in the smaller brushstrokes. I definitely appreciated this installment much more on recent rewatch as Jackson finds ways to locate thematically resonant echoes across the various storylines all coming to a head. It’s definitely a bit inflated on its own sense of self-importance (see: the never-ending cascade of almost endings) but a fantasy epic on this scale whose effects don’t feel dated in the slightest is quite an accomplishment. And while acting is usually one of the least discussed elements of the franchise, I couldn’t help but feel like one day we’ll look at Andy Serkis’ transformative motion-capture performance as present-day audiences look at Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.
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!
Big day tomorrow as we start rounding the corner toward the top tier!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall