The Best Picture Winners

The annual Academy Awards are over and all the Oscars have been distributed. The King's Speech was named Best Picture, the 83rd film to bestowed this honor since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out awards in 1927.

In total 485 films have received the nomination to be chosen Best Picture of the year and a recent tally shows that in all my years of movie watching I have seen 312 of them, or just under 65%. That leaves 173 films unseen. As I finish my attempt to watch a movie a day for a year I am beginning a new project.

My goal is to see every film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. I want to try to complete this before the Academy Awards in February 2012. It will be challenging since some of the films nominated in the past have slipped into obscurity and are not available on home video and a rarely screened.

An example of this is The Pied Piper. This 1942 WWII adventure story about an elderly English gentleman who helps lead children out of France during the Nazi invasion was released by 20th Century Fox and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Cinematography. The film has never had an official VHS or DVD release. I will have to hope TCM decides to show it, or do some searching on the Internet for a copy.

Amongst the films I have to see are some stand-outs, which as a movie buff, I am ashamed to admit I have not seen. The list includes such films as Reds, Nashville, A Streetcar Named Desire (shame on me), Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, There Will Blood and Babel. I also need to catch up with three of this year's nominees, The Fighter, 127 Hours and Winter's Bone.

The list also includes twelve Best Picture winners. Seven of these are from the  early days of Oscar; Wings, Broadway Melody, All Quiet On the Western Front, Cimarron, Grand Hotel, Cavalcade  and You Can't take It With You. But four on the list are modern movies; including last year's winner The Hurt Locker. I also need to see Out Of Africa, Platoon and The Deer Hunter. The twelfth film is 1948's Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier.

Of the 173 movies I need to watch 71% were made prior to 1960. My track record for films after 1960 is much better. For Instance from 1990 to 2005 I have seen all 75 films nominated during that fifteen year period.

I will get some support from Turner Classic Movies. They are screening Broadway Melody, Grand Hotel and Cavalcade. I have set my Tivo to record all three.

I am looking forward to my exploration of Oscar's past and seeing what films have stood the test of time and what films never deserved to be nominated.