In a comprehensive new poll of the 100 Greatest American Films of all time, released this week by BBC Culture, only a measly 12 Academy Award winning Best Pictures turn up at all, and only 8 of them in the top 75. Worse than that statistic for the lasting influence of the Academy’s Best Picture choices, according to this poll, a whopping 60, count ’em, 60 other movies mentioned were not even nominated for Best Picture. considered the benchmark of all Oscar winning Best Pictures, barely made the list at number 97, just one notch above Heaven’s Gate, the 1980 western that was a notorious disaster at the time but is clearly getting a second look. Ouch. Interestingly Michael Cimino’s one and only Best Picture winner, The Deer Hunter was AWOL, so take this all with a grain of salt, Academy. Perhaps it is choices like that one that have made this list the subject of much controversy and venom in the last few days. I thought it might be interesting to compare the BBC list to the record of the Academy in awarding Best Picture throughout their history.
The poll, taken among 62 international film critics, was commissioned also “to get a global perspective on American film” from critics around the world. Since Oscar has been seen as a symbol of ultimate quality in foreign markets for decades, the results here show Academy voters over the course of the organization’s near 90 years have not chosen films for their top prize that measure up with the passage of time compared to others they bypassed or completely overlooked. That is of course according to this talked-about poll which has gotten lots of traction and internet buzz, setting off debates on the merits of the American movies that made the cut, and those that didn’t. “American movie” is defined by BBC Culture as any film that received funding from a US source and not necessarily those by an American director. Such Oscar-winning Best Pictures as Lawrence Of Arabia, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Gandhi, or Tom Jones funded primarily outside the U.S. were apparently not eligible.
And although no David Lean film is represented, 32 movies on the list were from directors not even born in the US. Additionally the list seems to favor certain directors over others. Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese were among those helmers with several films mentioned, yet not always the ones the Academy championed. For instance the great John Ford has three films on the list but none of them are any of the four movies that earned him Oscars for Best Director, and two of the three that were included, The Searchers (#5) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (#45) received only a single Oscar nomination between them (Liberty Valance for 1962 B&W Costume Design) . On the other hand Francis Ford Coppola scored with both his Oscar winning Best Pictures, and The Godfather Part II (#10), in the top 10. 1943’s Casablanca (#9), 1946’s The Best Years Of Our Lives (#15), 1977’s Annie Hall (#23), and 1960’s The Apartment (#24) were the only other Best Picture winners to make the top 25. 1975’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (#59), 1994’s Forrest Gump (#74), 1993’s Schindler’s List (#78), 1961’s West Side Story (#88), and 2013’s 12 Years A Slave (#99) were the rest of the BP victors that made the cut. The latter film from British director Steve McQueen was the only Best Picture winner of the past 20 years to score a spot.
Orson Welles’ immortal 1941 classic, topped the list at No. 1, yet the film that beat it at the Oscars that year, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, isn’t to be found here. As already noted Ford’s highest finisher was 1956’s great western, The Searchers at No. 5. That film’s name never came up at the Oscars in ’56, the year the Academy nominated Giant, The Ten Commandments, Friendly Persuasion and The King & I for Best Picture, awarding the Oscar to Around The World In 80 Days. None of them are in the top 100. Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo is ranked No. 3, yet only earned Art Direction and Sound nominations from the Academy. The five nominees and winner that year (Gigi) are among the missing on the BBC list. Singin’ In The Rain is by far the highest ranking musical on this list at No. 7 but only got a supporting actress (Jean Hagen) and musical scoring nomination in 1952, the year The Greatest Show On Earth won Best Picture. 1959’s North By Northwest (#13) and Some Like It Hot (#30) made the top 30 along with that year’s Douglas Sirk Lana Turner starring sudser remake, Imitation Of Life (#37) and the great Howard Hawks western Rio Bravo (#41 but zero Oscar nominations), however 11-time Oscar winning Ben-Hur and the rest of that year’s Best Picture nominees were left out among many, many other films through the years given great attention by the Oscars in favor of the likes of 2001’s Mulholland Drive (#21), 1985’s Back To The Future (#56) and 1993’s Bill Murray comedy, Groundhog Day (#71). It goes on and on.
