Best Picture Oscar Winners

Oppenheimer is the latest movie to win the Best Picture Oscar
Oppenheimer is the latest movie to win the Best Picture Oscar

Want to know the best Best Picture Oscar Winners?  How about the worst Best Picture Oscar Winners?  Curious about Best Picture Oscar Winners’ box office grosses or which Best Picture Oscar Winners picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Best Picture Oscar Winners got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which one got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place …. because we have all of that information.

My first experience with the Oscars® was back in 1982 when I was 14. I had watched Raiders of the Lost Ark many times during the summer of 1981. And I was convinced it was the best movie ever to be filmed. When the Oscar® nominations came out I was so happy that Raiders received 8 nominations and I was convinced that Steven Spielberg would win Best Director and Raiders won would Best Picture. The night of the Oscar® show, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark win 4 minor Oscars® and 1 special Oscar® for sound.

After being sent to bed, I quietly turned on my black and white television that was in my room. I watched the last part of the show when they give out the major awards with the volume almost on mute. Finally they got to Best Director…and the winner was…..Warren Beatty ????? for Reds….I was stunned, but that was nothing compared to when they called Chariots of Fire for Best Picture of the Year. I could not believe they did not call out Raiders….I was convinced there most have been a mistake. No mistake, as the producers of Chariots of Fire got their Oscars®. Spielberg applauded the win, while I turned off the television and though how unfair life is sometimes. Not saying I am still bitter about the loss, but I still refuse to acknowledge Chariots of Fire as Best Picture of 1981. So there will be no Oscar® winner for the 1981 year on the tables.

Since 1927, there have been 97 Best Picture Oscar Winners. The following table ranks those 97 movies many different ways.   Just in case you are wondering Chariots of Fire is on the table….all the way down at #65.
Peter O'Toole in 1962's Lawrence of Arabia
Peter O’Toole in 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia

Best Picture Oscar Winning Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In The Table Below

The really cool thing about ther table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Winners by star of the movie
  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Winners by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Winners by critic reviews and audiences voting.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Best Picture Oscar Winners received.
  • Sort Best Picture Oscar Winners by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.  The ceiling to earn points for box office is $200 million…once a movie passes that mark it stops earning points in that category.
  • You can use the search button to sort by year
Charlton Heston in 1959's Ben-Hur
Charlton Heston in 1959’s Ben-Hur

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78 thoughts on “Best Picture Oscar Winners”

  1. “…ooooooooklahoma! Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain..” [stop it Steve!]

    Cogerson, I nearly kicked the telly in when Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture over Saving Ryan’s Privates. I’m still shocked.

    Oh and Driving Miss Daisy of all films beating Oliver Stone’s Born of the Fourth of July, I mean what happened there? Does anyone even remember Driving Miss Daisy? What were they thinking?

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve, there is a great book by Danny Peary…that looks at the Oscar races over the years….and tells you who should have won….and why they should have won….it is called Alternative Oscars….I highly recommend that book. I am glad that I was not the only one ready to kick the telly when Shakespeare in Love won….thanks for the update.

      Reply

  2. So poor old ‘Chariots of Fire’ – Wonder why they never made a sequel? I was looking forward to ‘Chariots of Fire 2: The Return of Liddell’ or ‘Chariots of Fire Part 13: Son of Abrahams’. Oh well, actually I think that ‘Chariots’ was very good, but as you know, I do agree with you it wasn’t as good as ‘Raiders’.

    But I guess the voters for the Academy Awards have their own way of doing these things, and fathoming that out would make a great subject for a movie.

    Great list Cogerson; most of these are great films and classics which have stood the test of time, and it’s good to see in your ‘Movie Score’ list a fairly even distribution of films from all decades; that should suggest to everyone that old films are really worth watching, but also that the business is still in a healthy state today.

    Reply

    1. Hey Greensleeves ….it is hard to believe that they did not make Chariots of Fire 2…they could have run back the other way on the beach…maybe one day they will make that movie.

      I think the number rule for Academy voters….if the movie makes lots of money….it can not be voted for…..as box office success must mean…the movie is not really that good…if the general public likes it.

      I thought the Movie Scores turned out very well….I think the only movie that looks out of place is #10 You Can’t Take It With You….which was huge back in the 1930s…but has no real lasting influence on current movies…thanks for checking out my page.

      Reply

  3. “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’ Oh, what a beautiful day. I’ve got a beautiful feelin’ Everything’s goin’ my way!”

    Sorry about that, Oklahoma got mentioned a few times and it set me off, I’m alright now.

    You can always do a movie page on Best Picture losers Cogerson, I’m sure Raiders will figure highly. Some of my favourite films failed to win, The Right Stuff lost to Terms of Endearment for chrissakes, Apocalypse Now lost to Kramer vs Kramer, Star Wars lost to effin’ Annie Hall, 2001 wasn’t even nominated [bites fist]

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve, any morning you wake and start singing songs from Oklahoma has to be a great morning. I think you forgot one of the biggest surprises in Oscar history….when Shakespeare in Love took down Saving Private Ryan….I still remember Harrison Ford appearing shocked when he read Shakespeare in Love versus his buddy Steve’s Saving Private Ryan. Once again Spielberg getting the short end of the stick.

      Reply

  4. VERY INTERESTING ABOUT OSCAR MOVIES. I have seen many of these and you gave a good presentation with all your facts and figures. Still waiting for William Holden. I saw an old movie today with Jean Arthur and William Holden – ARIZONA – wILLIAM HOLDEN LOOKED SO YOUNG. Jean Arthur had the larger role..

    Reply

    1. Hey Bern1960/Mom….thanks for checking out my Oscar winner hub….and thanks for the compliment. As for William Holden….he is next…no polls…no other hubs to write…Billy is next. I have already identified his 66 movies that will be on the hub….good news I have 11 of his movies already in my database…so that only leaves 55 movies to research. You have me on Arizona…I had never even heard of the movie….but Flora(the comment beneath yours) also says it is a good movie. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

  5. It was hard for me to decide how to respond to this hub because there were so many aspects.

    But as to your comments:

    The sound of Music is a fabulous film and I do love it. But it is neither my favourite Rodgers and Hammerstein musical-that would be Oklahoma!-nor is it my favuorite Shirley Jones musical-that would be Oklahoma! I have also read the novel and I prefer it. The Sound of Music was the first musical I was in. I was Sister Sophia and have very fond memories of that summer. I cannot watch that movie without thinking about it. I’ve noticed a tendency to be unable to fully involve myself in films of musicals I’ve been in.

    As for Gentlemen’s Agreement I am not surprised it doesn’t score high. It is excellent, but as it is about anti-semitism I am not surprised it didn’t get a huge box office and that is part of the movie Score.

    And in ranking a film at all, with movie score including money:I am never surprised to see that films I’v e seen sometimes don’t make any money or rate a high movie score. I watch a lot of *non-blockbuster films.* Thus I see a lot of top tens and then a whole bunch nearer the bottom.

    as for to Kill a Mockingbird not winning best picture-how could it compete against Lawrence of Arabia?

    I’ve always believed that in the studio system era, there were lots of movies that deserved to win a Best Picture Oscar that had been seen by a wide audience. They were all 5 star films in those days. now, it is difficult to find 5 movies that deserve the nomination without nominating independent films that a lot of the general population may not have seen.

    Thus, while I personally prefer To kill a Mockingbird over Lawrence of Arabia, I can’t fault with the actual winner. It’s one of the best films ever.
    Cogerson
    Thanks for checking in attempted humour….as I have gotten older…I realize movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark do not win the big prize….but as a 14 year old I was so mad that Chariots of Fire won the Oscar….at least now I can understand the logic of picking Chariots over Raiders.

    I agree Russell Crowe was awesome in A Beautiful Mind…in my opinion much better there than in Gladiator…and the movie Denzel won for was a cop story that had been done many many times before and since.

    I hope the Iron Lady is a great movie…it will be interesting to see Streep do the English accent…it might get her the third Oscar win…enjoy work.

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora….glad to see you like Sound of Music…I would have been shocked if you had not….very cool that you played Sister Sophia…that has to make watching the movie even more fun. Shirley Jones has always interested me….as a kid I only knew her as Mrs. Partridge…and to find out she had such a successful movie career well before her tv career…is so cool….and she even won an Oscar for Elmer Gantry.

      Let’s talk a minute about box office….when I started doing Movie Scores…box office results was probably about 70% of the equation….as I kept tweaking the formula….the box office kept falling and falling..to 40% for classic movies and 35% for current movies…also their is a ceiling to points a movie can earn….if a movie gets to 200 million…actual or inflated…it maxs out the points….so a movie like Gone With The Wind….only gets 40 points…no matter how far it exceeds 200 million. A movie like Gentleman’s Agreement with 184.40 million actually almost maxed out the box office points as it earned 36.88 points out of a possible 40.00….what actually lowered Gentleman’s Agreement was it’s pretty low(for Oscar winners) critic/audience score of 78%.

      I just recently watched To Kill A Mockingbird…it is probably one of the Top 3 movies I have seen in the last two or three years…Peck is awesome…a 5 star movie like you say….Lawerence got the Oscar edge because it is a 5 star movie and an epic movie….Oscar voters love epic stories.

      Thanks for the additional comments.

      Reply

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