A Look Back At Every Best Picture Oscar Winner Since 1939

    The 97th Academy Awards (the centennial year within sight!) are on Sunday, and in honor of the occasion, a trip down Hollywood's memory lane seemed apt. Please enjoy some research gathered for a power point I made for pleasure on this very subject - and yes, making a film history presentation counts as "fun" in my book! :)

 I will try and keep this post as short as possible given the 96 films we have to cover!

    As the oldest and widely considered most prestigious awards in the film industry, the Academy Awards started out as a private dinner function presentation with an audience of about 270 people and a ceremony reportedly lasting only 15 minutes! There are multiple theories about where the name "Oscar" originated, from a former Academy librarian saying the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar, to a columnist referring to it as theatre owner (and butt of many jokes in the press) Oscar Hammerstein I. Fun fact: due to a metal shortage during World War II, Oscar statues were made of painted plaster for three years. 

1929-1939

From the first year of the Academy Awards in 1929 all the way through to the end of the 30s, war and adventure epics and sweeping historical dramas reigned supreme. Take a look!

         

    The very first film to ever win Best Picture was William A. Wellman's WWI drama Wings. It employed aerial photography and a widescreen format that was the precursor to Cinemascope and notably starred silent film legend Clara Bow. MGM's first "talkie" The Broadway Melody, was the first of many musical pictures to snag the award, and All Quiet On The Western Front just barely squeezed it's way in before the notorious Hays Code was instated, which would later censor some of the more graphic war scenes. 

     

      

    Continuing on with more fun facts: Cimarron was one of the most expensive films of the period, Grand Hotel has been called "the Ocean's Eleven of pre-code films", and with It Happened One Night and Mutiny On The Bounty, the dreamy Clarke Gable began his triumphant decade of dominating the awards season. Lionel Barrymore also featured frequently in these last couple of films, before his health and career began their slow but steady decline. The Academy's favorite category (and one that will become increasingly tired in the coming years), is introduced with the biopic The Life of Emile Zola, and though I haven't seen Capra's Can't Take It With You, I was in a production of the play some years ago, and have quite the soft spot in my heart for the quirky family comedy that drives it's story.

1940-1950

    The 40's brought massive change and upheaval for the film industry. World War II had begun and would not end for another five years, and many of the films made during this time were playful and comedic in an effort to distract and cheer a fractured nation. Our Oscar winners, however, seem to fall mainly in the story-driven, family drama category that was also hugely popular in it's day. These films bolstered the public's morale and featured many of their favorite stars and starlets, who were splitting their time between filming these pictures and traveling the country selling bonds to help with the war effort. 

   

        What stronger way to start out the year than Gone With The Wind  tearing on to the scene? Breaking almost all of the records in Hollywood at the time and helmed by three different directors over the course of production, Vivien Leigh took home the award for best actress, and Hattie McDaniel made history as the first Black actor EVER to win an Oscar. This same year, Judy Garland won an honorary award for "Outstanding Juvenile Performance" in The Wizard of Oz. Alfred Hitchcock subsequently secured his first and only Best Picture win with Rebecca, Mrs. Miniver told the story of a family trying to cope with the effects of war, and Bogart and Bergman's pairing in Casablanca became one of the most iconic in film history.

     

   

    War is over! William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives is the first Best Picture winner after WWII, and was inspired by a Time magazine article about the struggles faced by returning veterans. Famed director Elia Kazan secured his first win for Gentleman's Agreement, helmed by the fabulous Gregory Peck, who portrays a journalist facing prejudice and ant-Semitism while pretending to be Jewish. We can already see the wealth of political thrillers and WWII dramas that immediately begin to spring up during this time, though Olivier's Hamlet and Mankiewicz's All About Eve (many might say Marilyn Monroe's first "big" film), are notable exceptions. 

1951-1960

    In many ways, Hollywood at it's peak. Show-stopping spectacle, lavish excess, and sobering, character-driven dramas abound!

   

   

   

    One of Gene Kelly's most iconic creations to date, An American In Paris (directed by Vincente Minnelli, father of Liza Minnelli) was the first musical of it's kind to take the Oscars by storm, beating A Streetcar Named Desire that year-though the latter cleaned up in almost every other category. Another highlight was Frank Sinatra's career shifting win for best supporting actor in From Here to Eternity, a film whose entire cast swept the 1953 ceremony, with the exception of Audrey Hepburn's win for Roman Holiday. Marlon Brando finally made his Oscar breakthrough in On The Waterfront,  Vincente Minelli continued to enjoy great success, and 3 hour epic Ben Hur rolls us right along into the '60s. Try and keep up! As an aside, the deep and abiding love I have for Yul Brynner will not let me go without mentioning his Best Actor win for The King and I in 1956.

1961-1969

    What a dynamic selection! Some of the most iconic movie musicals that many of us have grown up watching and loving took home the Best Picture title as the studio system began to crumble, and filmmakers struggled with rapid social change, budget cuts, and the movie-going audience's lackluster response to the historical epics of what was quickly becoming a bygone era.

   

 

   

    Broadway goes Hollywood with the explosive and incredibly moving West Side Story, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, and boy did musicals reign supreme throughout the decade, as My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews' win for Mary Poppins, and The Sound of Music the very next year show! Though the aforementioned Hattie McDaniel was the first Black actor in history to win an Oscar in 1940 (Hattie and her guest had to sit at a segregated table during the ceremony), Sidney Poitier was the first Black man to be both nominated for and win the award for Best Actor. Please also note the last musical winner you will see on this list for a long time, Oliver. 

1970-1980

    From Oliver to Midnight Cowboy (the only X-rated film to win an Oscar) - what a jump! You will likely notice that the shift the industry undergoes at the end of the decade is abrupt, though it had been brewing for a long time. Big budget movie musicals and cheesy, drawn-out epics were out of style. Audiences seemed to want more of the quirky arthouse character dramas and psychological/political thrillers that were dominating the box office. Gritty, violent, and certainly a cataclysmic shift from the winning films of just one year earlier, the 70's changed everything, and there was no going back.

   

   

   

  

 Coppola and Kubrick have entered the building, and Robert DeNiro, Sylvester Stallone, and Jack Nicholson introduced a very different kind of "leading man" to film audiences. The Godfather Part II was the first (and one of only two) sequels to win Best Picture to date, and the seemingly endless streak of Meryl Streep nominations (and wins!) began in earnest during this time. Just a cursory glance at the posters of these films alone seems to give the quintessential feeling of what the '70s were in film-the visuals and thematic tone of the day, the stars mentioned above, and the gutsy, yet sophisticated and ultimately unflinching way of telling a story that made it's mark on American popular culture and film buffs everywhere.

1981-1989

   Another incredibly diverse selection, this time showcasing the range of the innovative, influential and absolutely wild 1980's, the decade of decadence. An assassination attempt on President Reagan the night before the 1981 ceremony postponed the awards for 24 hours, and then things went on as usual.

   

   

   

    Robert Redford's directorial debut took home the win in 1980, and then Chariots of Fire, a film that almost hearkens back to an earlier era in it's production design, yet still remains quintessentially '80s, largely due to the dreamy and iconic synth score by Vangelis -one of my dad's all-time favorites! After the brash Amadeus and sweeping Out of Africa made their mark, Willem Dafoe gave an iconic performance in Platoon, and Jessica Tandy tearfully accepted her very first Oscar at 80 years old for Driving Miss Daisy.

1990-2000

    The modern blockbuster emerges in earnest as we move into the '90s, and "indie" filmmaking continues to grow strong, though it would be some years yet before those more under-the-radar films began to rack in the awards and the attention of the general movie-going public.

   

   

   

  

    Epic romances are back in (for a couple of years, at least), and so, as we see, are historical dramas- with one winning in this category almost every year. It's not that these types of films ever truly left the Oscars scene, but the 70's  and much of the 80's were certainly devoid of anything as ambitious as Schindler's List, Braveheart, Gladiator or Titanic, which was the biggest movie of the decade! This trio alone, along with Silence of the Lambs being the first of only two horror films to date to win Best Picture, make the '90s a standout in both my mind and film history.

2001-2009

    The next nine years were a...chaotic time for film to say the least. Fantasy film franchises, superheroes, and computer animation were dominating at the box office. (If you thought the '80s were some of the worst times for an overabundance of bad movies, think again!) Sequels, prequels, remakes, and easy-to-bank-on blockbusters cluttered a lot of the landscape, making the truly worthwhile gems stand out all the more.

   

   

   

    The bonafide movie musical returned to the awards circuit-albeit a bit shakily-with Chicago, the film version of which had been in the works for over three decades. The final installment in the groundbreaking Lord of the Rings series took home a surprising win for a fantasy franchise, while The Coen brother's No Country for Old Men clawed it's bloody way to the finish line and Slumdog Millionaire became the third foreign language film to achieve Best Picture status. 

I split this section up in an odd manner for visual purposes, and the decade itself technically ended with a particularly significant moment for me and female filmmakers everywhere, Kathryn Bigelow's groundbreaking (and LONG overdue) win as Best Director for The Hurt Locker, seen below. She was the very first and so far remains the only woman in history whose film won both Best Picture and Best Director.

2010-2020

The time and wealth of films between these years feels monumental and yet also somehow like no time has passed. Perhaps because this time in film feels so very recent in our collective memory, it is hard to look at any of these winners as "history" just yet. However, this was a fabulous 11 years in my opinion, and each of these Oscar picks represent something important and meaningful in their own right. Experimental, independent-leaning films are the new studio picture!

   

   

   

  

 Boy, do I wish there were more films like The Artist!! I have always found it somewhat bizarre that there hasn't been more of an effort made to produce great films about the silent era and the Golden Age of Hollywood. There seem to be so few of quality, and the ones that are made seem to rely more on fiction and satire than any attempt at portraying truth or preserving the history of what I consider to be the most interesting period in Film. I vividly remember watching newcomer Lupita Nyong'o, who had taken the industry by storm in 12 Years A Slave, accept her Oscar with "So much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's". Spotlight's fantastic score and performances, the masterful, powerful story driving Barry Jenkins's Moonlight, the gorgeous practical effects of del Torro's Shape of Water, not to mention Mahershala Ali in Green Book and the work of genius that is Parasite becoming the first non-English language film to win an Oscar-what a time to be a fan of the movies!

P.S. 2017 was the infamous year that La La Land was mistakenly awarded Best Picture when the award was supposed to go to Moonlight, and thus the greatest Oscar blunder in history was born. 

2021-2024

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. These last four films represent the changing tides of the industry in a way nothing else could.

   

 

Chloe Zhao's poignant indie winner Nomadland follows an older woman who lost everything in the recession choosing to adopt a transient, nearly homeless lifestyle as she journeys across America. Coda made history as a deaf coming of age comedy-drama, and it's lead became the the first deaf actor to win an Oscar. Everything Everywhere All At Once stands in an insane, multi-universe spanning category all it's own, beating every other film of 2023 by taking home 11 awards, and of course, we are left with Christopher Nolan's epic Oppenheimer as the most recent film to win the coveted statue, though I must say I would have been just as pleased if Poor Things had been called to the stage instead.

If you held on through to the end of this list, I congratulate you and wish a happy Oscar watching to all! There are certainly several players and pictures I have my eye on this year, as I daresay it has been one of my favorite awards seasons in recent memory.

Love always,

Callie ⁺₊✧

P.S. Tremendous guidance & facts for this post came from "The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History" by Jim Piazza and Gail Kinn. The book can be purchased here: The Academy Awards

Thanks also to two Variety articles on every Best Actor and Actress winner!