For three years now Buzzfeed‘s Kate Aurthur has been posting and refining a 2014 piece that ranks the Best Picture Oscar winners, in order of her preference. Here’s my somewhat shorter list of Best Picture winners that I’ll sometimes re-watch for fun or nourishment or both. It goes without saying that most Best Picture winners (the first was William Wellman‘s Wings) are not all that re-watchable, and that some (i.e, Peter Jackson‘s The Return of the King) are quite difficult to get through.
If I’ve failed to list certain well-regarded winners, it’s not because I don’t respect or admire them. It’s because I just can’t seem to goad myself into watching them again. I think ’em over, consider their merits, recall how I felt the last time I re-watched them…and I put them aside.
Ten Most Easily Re-Watchable Best Picture Winners (in this order): Francis Coppola‘s The Godfather (’72), The Godfather, Part II (’74), Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront (’54), Jonathan Demme‘s The Silence of the Lambs (’91), William Wyler‘s The Best Years of Our Lives (’46), William Friedkin‘s The French Connection (’71), Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment (’60), Fred Zinneman‘s A Man For All Seasons (’66), David Lean‘s Lawrence of Arabia (’62); Franklin Schaffner‘s Patton (’70).
First Runners-Up (11 through 20): Clint Eastwood‘s Unforgiven (’92), Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed (’06), Joel & Ethan Coen‘s No Country For Old Men (’07), David Lean‘s The Bridge on the River Kwai (’57), Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker (’09), James L. Brooks‘ Terms of Endearment (’83), Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s All About Eve (’50), Michael Curtiz‘s Casablanca (’42), Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80), George Roy Hill‘s The Sting (’73).
Final Grouping (21 through 30): David O. Selznick‘s Gone With The Wind (’39), Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones ’63), Fred Zinneman‘s From Here To Eternity (’53), Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman (’15), Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rebecca (’40), Frank Capra‘s It Happened One Night (’34), Robert Rossen‘s All The King’s Men (’49), John Ford‘s How Green Was My Valley (’41), Woody Allen‘s Annie Hall (’78), John Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone‘s Rocky (’76).
Special Emotional Dispensations: The last 20 or 30 minutes of James Cameron‘s Titanic (’97), the last 10 minutes of Sam Mendes‘ American Beauty, certain portions of Laurence Olivier‘s Hamlet (’48).
Pretty much every other Best Picture winner going back to ’27/’28 is either underwhelming, pompous, stodgy, appalling, tough to get through, embarassing or just flat-out unwatchable. The Artist, The King’s Speech, Chicago, Around The World In 80 Days, Crash, The Greatest Show on Earth, Gigi, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, etc. It’s depressing to even list these films, much less think about them.
