Academy Award for Best Picture

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"Best Picture" redirects here. For other uses, see Best Picture (disambiguation).
Academy Award for Best Picture
Awarded for Best Picture of the Year
Country United States
Presented by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
First
awarded
1929 (for films released during
the 1927/1928 film season)
Currently
held by
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Official
website
oscars.org
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented
annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
to producers working in the filmindustry and is the only category in which every member is
eligible to submit a nomination. Best Picture is considered the most important of the
Academy Awards, as it represents all the directing, acting, music composing, writing,
editing and other efforts put forth into a film. Consequently, Best Picture is the final award
of every Academy Awards ceremony. The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in
Los Angeles, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002,
showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception.
[1]
As of
the 86th Academy Awards nominations, there have been 512 films
[2]
nominated for the Best
Picture award.
Contents
[hide]
1 History
o 1.1 Category name changes
o 1.2 Recipients
o 1.3 Best Picture and Best Director
o 1.4 Nomination limit increased
o 1.5 Controversies
o 1.6 Sequel nominations and winners
o 1.7 Silent film winners
o 1.8 Version availability
2 Winners and nominees
o 2.1 1920s
o 2.2 1930s
o 2.3 1940s
o 2.4 1950s
o 2.5 1960s
o 2.6 1970s
o 2.7 1980s
o 2.8 1990s
o 2.9 2000s
o 2.10 2010s
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
History[edit]
Category name changes[edit]
At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony (for 1927 and 1928), there were two categories that
were seen as equally the top award of the night: Outstanding Picture and Unique and
Artistic Production, the previous being won by the war epicWings, and the latter by the art
film Sunrise, both the awards were intended to honor different and equally important
aspects of superior filmmaking. The following year, the Academy dropped the Unique and
Artistic Production award, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings was the
highest honor that could be awarded.
[3]
Though the award kept the title Outstanding
Picture for the next ceremony, the name underwent several changes over the years as
seen below, the last being in 1962 when it became Best Picture.
[2]

1927/28 to 1928/29: Academy Award for Outstanding Picture
1929/30 to 1940: Academy Award for Outstanding Production
1941 to 1943: Academy Award for Outstanding Motion Picture
1944 to 1961: Academy Award for Best Motion Picture
1962 to present: Academy Award for Best Picture
Recipients[edit]
Originally the production company was presented the award until 1950 whereupon all
credited producers were able to receive the award. This rule was modified in 1998, when a
three-producer limit was applied due to all five producers ofShakespeare in Love receiving
the award.
[4][5][6]

As of 2014, the "Special Rules for the Best Picture of the Year Award" limit recipients to
those who meet two main requirements:
[7]

those with screen credit of "producer" or "produced by"
those three or fewer producers who have performed the major portion of the producing
functions
The rules permit "bona fide team[s] of not more than two people to be considered to be a
single 'producer' if the two individuals have had an established producing partnership for at
least the previous five years and as a producing team have produced a minimum of five
theatrically-released feature motion pictures during that time.
[7]

The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney
Pollack were posthumously among the four producers nominated for The Reader.
[8]
As of
2014 it is the Producers Branch Executive Committee that makes such exceptions, only in
"rare and extraordinary circumstance[s]."
[7]

Best Picture and Best Director[edit]
The Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director have been very closely linked
throughout their history. Of the 86 films that have been awarded Best Picture,
[dated info]
62 have
also been awarded Best Director. Only four films have won Best Picture without their
directors being nominated:
[dated info]
Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), Driving Miss
Daisy (1989), and Argo (2012). The only two Best Director winners to win for films which
did not receive a Best Picture nomination are distinctly during the early years: Lewis
Milestone for Two Arabian Knights (1927/28), and Frank Lloyd for The Divine
Lady (1928/29).
[9]

Nomination limit increased[edit]
On June 24, 2009, AMPAS announced that the number of films nominated in the Best
Picture award category would increase from five to ten, starting with the 82nd Academy
Awards (2009).
[10]
The expansion was a throwback to the Academy's early years in the
1930s and 1940s, when eight to twelve films were nominated. "Having 10 Best Picture
nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic
movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the
race for the top prize," AMPAS President Sid Ganis said in a press conference. "I can't wait
to see what that list of 10 looks like when the nominees are announced in February."
[10]
At
the same time, the voting system was switched from first-past-the-post to instant runoff
voting (also known as preferential voting).
[11]
Two years after this change, the Academy
revised the rule again so that the number of films nominated was between 5 and 10;
nominated films must earn either 5% of first-place rankings or 5% after an abbreviated
variation of the single transferable vote nominating process used for nominations in other
major categories.
[12]
Bruce Davis, the Academy executive director at the time, stated, "A
Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit. If there are only
eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn't feel an obligation to
round out the number."
[13]

Controversies[edit]
The Award is not without controversy. One point of contention is the lack of consideration of
non-English language films for Best Picture. To date, only nine foreign language films have
been nominated in the category: Grand Illusion (French, 1938); Z (French, 1969); The
Emigrants (Swedish, 1972); Cries and Whispers (Swedish, 1973); Il
Postino (Italian/Spanish, 1995); Life Is Beautiful (Italian, 1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon (Mandarin Chinese, 2000); Letters from Iwo Jima (Japanese, 2006, but ineligible
for Best Foreign Language Film, as it was an American production); and Amour (French,
2012).
[14]

Other points of contention include the lack of animated films being nominated
(Disney's Beauty and the Beast became the first film to get nominated, and Disney-
Pixar's Up and Toy Story 3 were nominated after the Academy expanded the number of
nominees); no science fiction film has won despite a number of successful nominees; only
one fantasy film has won the award: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003;
and only two comedies (Shakespeare in Love, 1998; and The Artist, 2011) have won in the
last 30 years. Also to date, there has yet to be a documentary nominated for Best Picture.
[15]

12 films exclusively financed outside the United States have won Best Picture, 11 of which
were financed, in part or in whole, by the United Kingdom. Those films were, in
chronological order: Hamlet, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Tom
Jones, A Man for All Seasons, Oliver!, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, The Last
Emperor, Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech. The twelfth film, The Artist, was
financed in France.
[15]

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in February 2014, two-thirds of Americans had yet to see
any of the movies nominated for the 2014 best picture Oscar.
[16][17][18][19]

Sequel nominations and winners[edit]
Only a small number of sequels have been nominated for Best Picture of which two have
won; The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Other
nominees include The Bells of St. Mary's, The Godfather Part III,The Lord of the Rings: The
Two Towers and Toy Story 3.
[14]

Another nominee, Broadway Melody of 1936, was a follow-up of sorts to previous
winner The Broadway Melody, although, beyond the title and some music, there is no story
connection with the earlier film. In addition, The Silence of the Lambswas adapted from the
sequel novel to Red Dragon, which had previously been adapted for the screen
as Manhunter by a different studio. Furthermore, another Best Picture nominee, The Lion in
Winter, features Peter O'Toole as King Henry II, a role he had played previously in the
film Becket. Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima was a companion piece to his
film Flags of Our Fathers, released earlier the same year, which depicts the same battle
from different viewpoints; the two films were shot back-to-back.
Notably, the only remake to win is The Departed, though a few other winners, such
as Mutiny on the Bounty and Ben-Hur, were heavily inspired and influenced by previous
films of the same name, they were nevertheless primarily considered different adaptations
of the same novel.
[20]

Silent film winners[edit]