ROBBED! The Films that Should Have Won the Oscar for Best Picture

Tomorrow is cinema's biggest night. A pageantry of the year's best and to the victors, a large golden statuette signifying that without question, they made the best picture this past year. But needless to say, the jury is still out for how much of an accurate marker the Academy Awards are in cinematic excellence. It's not politically correct to admit it, but on more than one occasion, the Oscar for Best Picture went to the wrong film. Forget, for just a second, the politics of what gets nominated each year. There's something even more significant to be said about which films are given the grand prize, and why? In reality, the Academy voting process is a democracy, and just like civic democracy, we don't always make the right decisions. Usually, we realize these mistakes in hindsight and excuse these decisions based on the attitudes of the times they occurred. Today, I look back at those times, and provide my commentary and personal opinion on what film's should have won the grand prize on Oscar night.



1941
What Won: How Green Was My Valley
What Should Have Won: Citizen Kane 

Viewers, we can pretty much figure out this one. How many people have heard of John Ford's How Green Was My Valley? Not many. How many people have heard of Citizen Kane? Practically everyone. Citizen Kane changed the landscape of narrative cinema. It taught us new ways to visually study characters. You can say, it was a cinematic Tour de Force of the first kind. Orson Welles hypnotizes his audience in disgust and fascination as Charles Foster Kane. It's hard to find a legitimate reason for this snub, but perhaps the Academy wasn't ready to embrace a film this new and different.



1960
What Won: The Apartment 
What Should Have Won: Psycho

The Apartment is a romantic comedy, and from what I've heard, a fine one at that. But whereas The Apartment was a flash in the pan, Psycho was a revolution. A film that terrified a nation, made Hitchcock a household name, and made us think twice about jumping in the shower. A film that charms is one thing, a film that taps into our worst nightmares is a feat not many filmmakers can come close to achieving. Not surprisingly, the Oscars weren't ready to open their arms to the genre of horror, at least for 31 years.



1966
What Won: A Man for All Seasons 
What Should Have Won: Blow-Up 

Blow-Up was the beginning of a cultural shift in world cinema. A counter-cultural shift if you will. Free love, questioning authority and celebrating the taboo and the strange were beginning to take hold on the silver screen. Blow-Up bashed our cultural norms with a sledgehammer. Cinematically speaking, it broke all of the rules as well. At one point, a character purposely walks into frame and bumps into the camera. Post-Modern and proud of it. Michelangelo Antonioni was in touch with the times and adapting to them. The Academy, however, was still stuck in the past.



1967
What Won: In the Heat of the Night 
What Should Have Won: The Graduate 

By 67', The Academy was finally recognizing, as Bob Dylan famous put it, that "The Times They are a-Changin'". Thus, the beginning of the "Oscar bait". Films that the Oscars perceived to be indicative of a new American society emerging, but missing the mark by quite a mile. In The Heat of the Night as well as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner fabulously and necessarily challenged our nation's problems with race, which at that time, was coming to a breaking point. But what they missed was another counter-cultural classic in The Graduate. It's narrative structure, surreal. It's cinematography, unmistakable. The performances, remarkable. The soundtrack, unforgettable. The Graduate has everything a cinephile can ask for and more.



1968
What Won: Oliver!
What Should Have Won: 2001: A Space Odyssey

This year, the Academy played it safe. They awarded a fun, happy musical based on Oliver Twist. They wanted to feel good and relax as a way to escape a world at war and nation that was on the brink of falling apart. Looking back, however, snubbing Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece is an unforgivable act. 2001 is not for everyone, but on a technological scale, there is no denying that it was way ahead of it's time. Sights and sounds audiences never saw before were projected before us. Kubrick took us to the moon and back, literally. The moving image hasn't been the same ever since.



1971
What Won: The French Connection
What Should Have Won: A Clockwork Orange 

Snubbing Kubrick became a pattern at the Oscars. But perhaps this one was more justified. A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing, gruesome hellscape into the mind of a psychopathic rapist and his merry gang of thugs. Are we supposed to be surprised that it didn't win? But should we also ignore it's near perfect cinematic interpretation of an abstract story? As horrifying as it is, watching A Clockwork Orange is an awe inspiring experience. It's genius, plain and simple. I like The French Connection a lot, but compared to Clockwork, it looks like a made for primetime TV film.



1973
What Won: The Sting
What Should Have Won: The Exorcist

The Sting delighted audiences. The Exorcist had audiences running out of the theaters screaming. Never before did cinema see a more graphic depiction of a demon quite like Pazuzu. The special effects were good. Perhaps too good for the 1970's. The impact it had on our still overtly evangelical nation was also undeniable. America had a lot to repent for in those days, and what better way to put the fear of God back into our general population than a literal demon puking split pea soup into a Catholic priest's face.



1976
What Won: Rocky
What Should Have Won: Taxi Driver 

We all know Rocky. The average zero turned boxing hero. YOOO ADRIAN!!! Yeah it's American as apple pie. But Taxi Driver? Forget about it. Scorsese captured scummy New York in a way no other filmmaker had at that time, and Robert DeNiro's Travis Bickle will forever be bone-chilling.



1979
What Won: Kramer vs. Kramer
What Should Have Won: Apocalypse Now 

Francis Ford Coppola came off of the set of The Godfather and jumped straight into the murky depths of the Vietnam war in an honest look at a war our nation should have never fought. The senseless carnage and the tortured souls that walked the battlefield. Kramer vs. Kramer is a well-made but sappy story about divorce and child custody.



1980
What Won: Ordinary People 
What Should Have Won: Raging Bull 

Scorsese and DeNiro, once again, in rare form. Jake LaMotta, the bastard of boxing and the worst husband any woman could ever have. A character study that film lovers will never forget. Ordinary People is just a melodrama.



1983
What Won: Terms of Endearment 
What Should Have Won: Fanny and Alexander

Ingmar Bergman never won an Oscar for Best Director. Remember that when you tell me how good Terms of Endearment was.



1985
What Won: Out of Africa 
What Should Have Won: Brazil



1989
What Won: Driving Miss Daisy
What Should Have Won: Do The Right Thing 

One was a feel-good movie about positive race relations, the other is the most honest and unapologetic look at racism in America that you'll ever see. A Spike Lee Joint in the year 1989 was destined never to win an Oscar and it didn't. But looking back, the Oscar's really screwed up big time, and that's the double-truth, Ruth!



1990
What Won: Dances with Wolves
What Should Have Won: GoodFellas

Are you kidding me?



1992
What Won: Unforgiven
What Should Have Won: Malcolm X 



1994
What Won: Forrest Gump
What Should Have Won: Pulp Fiction

America wasn't ready to embrace Quentin Tarantino and the violent, profane world he inhabits. In terms of watchable films, nothing beats Pulp Ficton. But, I forgive them and totally understand them choosing Forrest Gump.



1996
What Won: The English Patient
What Should Have Won: Fargo

A stuffy, pretentious British film beating out a Coen Bros. legend? Sorry, I'm not feeling that. Nobody does.



1997
What Won: Titanic 
What Should Have Won: Boogie Nights

One man's opinion.



1998
What Won: Shakespeare in Love
What Should Have Won: Life is Beautiful or Saving Private Ryan 

Now you are really kidding me. Two of the greatest films that have ever been made about WWII. One  a full throated tribute to the greatest generation, the other, a tear-jerking comedy about the Holocaust. Of all of the snubs I've ever heard of, this particular one stings the most. It's criminal.



2002
What Won: Chicago
What Should Have Won: Gangs of New York or Punch-Drunk Love 



2004
What Won: Million Dollar Baby
What Should Have Won: The Aviator 

Million Dollar Baby is hokey and not one of Clint Eastwood's best.



2010
What Won: The King's Speech
What Should Have Won: Black Swan



2017
What Won: The Shape of Water
What Should Have Won: Lady Bird

Finally we come to last year's Academy Awards. I wasn't too thrilled that The Shape of Water brought it on home, despite being a fan of it. I love Guillermo Del Toro's twisted world of monsters. But Lady Bird touched that warm spot inside me wanting a film about a teenager as odd as Lady Bird. Greta Gerwig is a filmmaker for a whole new generation, and I cannot wait to see what she does next.