All 93 Best Picture Oscar Winners, Ranked

Since the first Academy Awards, back in 1927, the best picture gong has been awarded to 92 different films. And do you know what? Congrats. Well done all round. Leaving aside any palaver over the rights and wrongs of each win, it's the ultimate, historic achievement that any film can notch up. At the time that they won, they were at the forefront of what cinema could do.

However. While they've all been equally rewarded by the Academy, some best picture winners are more equal than others. Some, in fact, are outright unwatchable, while others disappeared into the annals of film history but deserve another look. So, we've put every single one of them in order, from worst to best.

Obviously, it's completely impossible to objectively weigh 92 films made across the best part of a century, in every conceivable genre and with wildly different intentions. So, mostly, it's about whether I like them or not. Let's go!

93. Cimarron (1930/31)

A clunking, ponderous Western family saga which reckons white people were the best thing ever to happen to America. One long yikes.

92. The Deer Hunter (1978)

Unbearably annoying, and the wedding section’s so long you’ll find yourself praying for a barely competent local band to start parping out ‘Mr Brightside’ so you can sneak off.

91. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Only really makes sense as an early example of the Academy’s softness for chucking a sorry-we-missed-you Oscar at elder statesmen who missed out during their golden years, in this case the 70-year-old Silent Era titan Cecille B Demille.

90. The King’s Speech (2010)

Shameless forelock-tugging guff, the only gag of which is a plummy Colin Firth saying “bugger orf”. So the king’s got a stutter – what are they going to do, not let him be king anymore? Plus, it’s a bit of a cheek implying Bertie’s stuttering helped win the war, when he was one of the few people in the country who didn’t have to actually do anything.

89. Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Didn’t think it was possible, but Tom Stoppard finally managed to create a film composed entirely of odourless, flavourless gas. Not actively bad, but not really anything else either.

88. Gone With the Wind (1939)

Great as Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland are in this, it’s not revisionism to point out quite how badly this film treats Black characters – almost as soon as it was released, it was getting slated for it. It’s also only marginally shorter than the actual American Civil War.

87. The Broadway Melody (1928/29)

An early landmark in the talkie takeover which was nearly immediately overtaken by more inventive musicals. There’s a fun bit where a dancer tap-dances in ballet shoes while en pointe.

86. Braveheart (1995)

This bloody, muddy William Wallace biopic is one of the most self-indulgent films ever made, and given how Mel Gibson John McClanes his way around the Highlands, this could have been called Dye Hard Woad a Vengeance. Plus, I’m all for taking the piss out of the English, but you’ve got to draw the line at the borderline homophobic treatment of Edward II.

85. Crash (2005)

This turns up on Worst Oscar Winners Ever lists all the time, but I’m telling you right now: it’s not as crap as Shakespeare in Love.

84. Dances With Wolves (1990)

Always gets dunked on because it beat Goodfellas, which isn’t really fair. Please, dunk instead on its bloated length and smug piety.

83. Cavalcade (1932/33)

The story of a London society family between the Siege of Mafeking and the mid-Thirties, calling at Queen Victoria’s funeral, Louis Bleriot’s flight over the channel in a monoplane, the sinking of the Titanic (off-screen sadly), and World War One. Very meh.

82. The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

Quite decent, if quite narratively jerky, but it’s a bit odd that a film about anti-Semitism never actually mentions anti-Semitism.

81. The Artist (2011)

The Oscars, we know, love films about making films. The Artist was the most infinitely dense point of Golden Age nostalgia possible: a silent, black-and-white retread of A Star Is Born, with a dog. Some nice moments though.

80. Out of Africa (1985)

Robert Redford being handsome on the veld isn’t a chore to watch. Wafts by on a warm summer breeze without really doing anything particularly interesting.

79. The Departed (2006)

A Scorsese-directed mob-versus-police drama starring Leo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson should not be this underwhelming. Again, very much a belated reward for a brilliant career, rather than a deserved award for a brilliant film.

78. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

This expansive, expensive musical biopic of the Broadway legend Flo Ziegfeld Jr is a bit like going to look at the QEII: you’re not going to feel very much, and you might be turned off by the excess, but you probably should see it if only to witness just how insanely huge it is.

77. Going My Way (1944)

A little bit gluey, but how many times can you describe an Oscar winner as being about a happy-go-lucky priest, much less a happy-go-lucky priest played by Bing Crosby?

76. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Every so often Russell Crowe stops flapping his hands around his temples (he’s acting, you see) to stare up in the air as an idea plunks into his head.

75. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

Another one that suffers for having beaten something demonstrably better, cooler and more popular. And, you’ve got to say: fair enough. A nice film, which tries to tell us that racism is bad, but also that it mostly happened in the past.

74. Green Book (2018)

As many people pointed out at the time, Green Book is Driving Miss Daisy except this time, the racist’s in the front seat. Mahershala Ali, though.

73. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

David Niven is Phileas Fogg in a wildly star-stuffed adaptation which also sees Sir John Gielgud, Noel Coward, Peter Lorre, Marlene Dietrich, Buster Keaton and Frank Sinatra stick their heads in. There’s absolutely no depth to it, but it’s fully aware of that and doesn’t really give a toss.

72. Gigi (1958)

A frothy lark, and not much more.

71. Forrest Gump (1994)

A bit like The Broadway Melody, Forrest Gump’s big draw was the wild technological leaps which let Tom Hanks’ aw-shucks yokel meet JFK, Nixon, and a truly terrible John Lennon impersonator. But the more you watch it, the less there is to see.

70. American Beauty (1999)

There aren’t many films which were so lauded and analysed at the time and then fell out of people’s brains as completely. Quite smarmy and smug, though the bit about the plastic bag did indirectly inspire Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’.

69. You Can’t Take it With You (1938)

Frank Capra does what Frank Capra does: Jimmy Stewart in an uplifting tale of young love and the sanctity of community and family? Buddy! That’s Frank Capra!

68. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Gregory Peck is a journalist who takes on a Jewish identity to investigate anti-Semitism. He does seem surprisingly shocked by anti-Semitism existing, but it’s a thoughtful treatise on bigotry and complicity. Next time though, Greg, just ask someone Jewish.

67. Birdman (2014)

Yes, we were all very impressed at the time. But in retrospect it’s a bit of a wank-fest, isn’t it?

66. From Here to Eternity (1953)

This gigantic hit about the romantic palaver unfolding on a Hawaiian army base during World War II feels a bit overcooked at points, but you really do feel the vibes between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.

65. An American in Paris (1951)

The quintessential Hollywood musical, with Gene Kelly given free rein to whirl about and a 17-minute, half-a-million-dollar ballet sequence at its climax. Lush, but the songs aren’t all that.

64. Ordinary People (1980)

If you, like Robert Redford, win the best picture Oscar with the first film you direct, you should be given a special, much larger Oscar statue, and obliged to retire from directing immediately. This film is fine.

63. Marty (1955)

Haven’t seen it. It’s plonked here as a control, just a completely neutral non-film.

62. The Last Emperor (1987)

This biopic of Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, is an appropriately gigantic and gorgeous epic, even if it does sometimes feel like it only really wants to be gigantic and gorgeous.

61. Gandhi (1982)

A sprawling biopic that sprawls a little bit too much. Good, though, if you’ve got three hours burning a hole in your pocket.

60. Mrs Miniver (1942)

The first film about World War II to win best picture but, by god, it was not the last. The all-hands-to-the-pumps wartime tub-thumping time-locks it a bit, but it is at least well-made propaganda.

59. Argo (2012)

Eight years. Eight years between winning an Oscar and finding yourself trying to jam a cardboard cut-out of Ana de Armas into the recycling in the dead of night. Eight bloody years.

58. Terms of Endearment (1983)

One of the funniest out-and-out weepies around, with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson spinning off each other nicely.

57. All the King’s Men (1949)

A greasy promise-anything governor manages to lie his way to the top, then lies himself all the way back down again. Absolutely fine.

56. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

This boxing drama is very big and very sad and you know exactly what it wants you to feel at all times, but that doesn’t stop its clichés ending up genuinely moving and heartfelt.

55. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

This isn’t the one where Anthony Hopkins screams, “GOD DAMN YER EYES,” but there’s more than enough rigging-shaking shout-acting from Clark Gable and Charles Laughton to go around.

54. The Sound of Music (1965)

Sometimes, insisting that a film is A Big Part Of Christmas means that it’s impossible to enjoy for 49 weeks of the year. So it is with The Sound of Music. Conversely: The Muppet Christmas Carol is welcome all year round. Not sure how that works.

53. Platoon (1986)

Oliver Stone isn’t one for understatement, and he managed to focus his bombast into a concentrated blast for this harrowing ground-level Vietnam story.

52. Hamlet (1948)

Laurence Olivier copped a bit of flak from the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stans for hacking text like a Danish prince through a dithering old man hiding behind a tapestry, but this is a bold, genuinely cinematic Hamlet.

51. How Green Was My Valley (1941)

It beat Citizen Kane, but that’s not How Green Was My Valley’s fault. The wildly romantic reminiscences of life in the Welsh valleys’ coal pits might not be strictly true – Richard Llewellyn, who wrote the book, pretended to be Welsh and had never actually been to the country when he wrote it – but John Ford’s dewy-eyed view of village life is cosily convincing.

50. Ben-Hur (1959)

I had a joke that was along the lines of “Ben-Hur? More like Ben-Huh???? What’s all that about????” But Ben-Hur is good, to be fair.

49. Chicago (2002)

You’ve definitely forgotten how good Chicago is. A rare best picture winner that’s also a slam-dunk Friday night in movie. Not perfect, but a lot of fun.

48. Tom Jones (1963)

Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel about a man who simply cannot control his horn gets a very ooh-er-missus early Sixties reboot. Thankfully Benny Hill was ignored for the title role in favour of the always excellent Albert Finney.

47. The Sting (1973)

This, I’m going to say, is the point where we get to The Good Shit. Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Robert Shaw, scams, larks, double-crosses and cons: it all goes down very smooth. Bumped down a few rungs for singlehandedly starting a ragtime revival, which would later mutate into full-blown electro swing.

46. Patton (1970)

Really good, though George C Scott’s grimacing, barking Patton dominates every scene so completely that nothing else really gets a look-in. Then again, it takes a big performance to distract people from those mad eyebrows.

45. The Lost Weekend (1945)

Way ahead of its time in how it depicts the wreckage that alcoholism leaves in the wake of someone trapped by it, and the desperate hollowness in its central character’s soul.

44. A Man For All Seasons (1966)

Another big Brit history bash, this time about the rise, fall and untimely decapitation of Sir Thomas More. Gains a couple of places for Orson Welles playing Cardinal Wolsey as the “Y Tho” meme.

43. Grand Hotel (1931/32)

A lot of the time, just jamming as many stars as you can into a film gives you Movie 43. Sometimes, though, it superheats it into something extraordinary. Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford tie up a knot of stories about the well-heeled and extremely bored residents of a Berlin hotel.

42. Chariots of Fire (1981)

Another entry in the Brit history winners. It tends to jog along rather than sprint, but the sight of runners plodging up West Sands in St Andrews is still really stirring.

41. The English Patient (1996)

Ralph Fiennes relives a tempestuous love affair with Kristin Scott Thomas while slowly dying in an Italian monastery. Sumptuous, time-shuffling stuff.

40. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)

In spite of some great bits, this is the least magical and most dirge-like of the Peter Jackson trilogy. Once you get into the third epilogue it starts feeling like it might genuinely never end. Still really good though.

39. Wings (1927/28)

Set among a love triangle at the outbreak of World War One, the first best picture winner is still a startlingly fresh watch, particularly the thrilling, gorgeous dogfight sequences.

38. Unforgiven (1992)

Clint Eastwood found his second wind and his first Oscar with a Western which picks over the bones of the genre’s first, bloodthirsty flush.

37. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

There’s a steely, unsentimental core to David Lean’s wartime epic which means it still feels very sharply modern.

36. West Side Story (1961)

Great dancing and everything, but of the postwar musicals to have won best picture, this has the fewest bangers.

35. Annie Hall (1977)

Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but the fact is Annie Hall is very, very good.

34. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Lovely Dev Patel takes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in Danny Boyle’s extremely hectic Mumbai Bildungsroman. Although, as we later found out on ITV’s sequel Quiz, Fleabag’s sister fixed the whole thing.

33. Rain Man (1988)

If you’ve only seen Rain Man via spoofs and nods, just one thing: don’t think that you’re going to learn a lot about winning blackjack. Hoffman’s performance is the most eye-catching, but Tom Cruise is really, really, really great in this.

32. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

An interesting one to watch in a double-bill with the up-and-at-them Mrs Miniver. This one foregrounds the trauma veterans carried and the difficulty many had adapting to peacetime again, and feels all the more far-sighted for it.

31. Rocky (1976)

Less a sports film than a kitchen sink drama about a man who makes ends meet by being punched repeatedly in the face, and, much like its protagonist, the ultimate underdog Oscar winner.

30. My Fair Lady (1964)

It’s got more tunes than you remember, though kicking off with Dr Henry Higgins’ elocution belter ‘Why Can’t the English?’ sets a pace it’s impossible to keep up. Nonetheless: luvverly.

29. Titanic (1997)

A meeting of Hollywood unsinkables: British period drama; Poseidon Adventure-style disaster scenes; rich-girl-poor-boy yarn; and the era’s most swoonsome leading man dying a romantic if slightly unnecessary death.

28. In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Sidney Poitier’s gigantic performance lifts this crime thriller about a Philadelphia police detective wrongly accused of murder in small-town Mississippi. Quincy Jones’ score bangs too.

27. On the Waterfront (1954)

Scorsese called Marlon Brando’s performance as docker Terry Malloy “the purest poetry imaginable, in dynamic motion,” and he's not wrong.

26. Spotlight (2015)

Very few films make news journalism look both as exciting as it is in real life and as punishingly tedious as it is in real life. All the President’s Men does it, and so does Spotlight.

25. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/30)

The ultimate anti-war film. A group of German boys, fired up with nationalist zeal by their teacher, enlist for the Great War and see the terrifying, pitiful face of it. The spectacularly mounted battle scenes still look amazing.

24. Oliver! (1968)

Wall-to-wall bangers – ‘Who Will Buy?’ is surely ripe for a poppers-and-lasers remix – and Oliver Reed’s glower power make this musical about poverty, organised crime, kidnapping and murder a perennial family favourite.

23. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

The grimy, grubby story of a would-be gigolo’s triumph was an important win: Midnight Cowboy marked the coming of New Hollywood, and of a new kind of Oscar winner which didn’t try to razzle-dazzle ‘em.

22. It Happened One Night (1934)

Having ditched her husband to elope with a bloke who turns out to be awful, heiress Ellie Andrews is ditching him to go back to her husband when she bumps into reporter Peter Warne, who promises to help her out. Romance, inevitably, ensues. Totally delightful.

21. Kramer Vs Kramer (1979)

Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman slug it out in court for custody of a little pain in the arse called Billy. They’re both extraordinarily good. It’s a film that treats you like an adult, and never overplays its hand.

20. Amadeus (1984)

An opulent, rhapsodic telling of Mozart’s life, as seen through the eyes of his furious rival Salieri. The thesis: sometimes God bestows genius upon irritating wankers.

19. The Shape of Water (2017)

Guillermo del Toro’s very charming, very soggy fantasy romance sees Sally Hawkins’ Elisa Esposito, who’s mute, fall for a merman who’s about to be vivisected by the government. Tender and joyous.

18. Nomadland (2020)

You expect Frances McDormand to be great, obviously, but she is really fantastic here as Fern, a woman who starts living in her van after her husband's death and the collapse of her town's only industry . Chloé Zhao's unhurried wander into the wreckage of the recession avoids easy answers and worn-out assumptions.

17. Gladiator (2000)

Feels like it belongs to a different age entirely, and not just thanks to Oliver Reed’s ghost. Nobody makes films about the Romans anymore, much less extremely expensive films about the Romans. All that grandeur, though, is anchored by Russell Crowe’s craggily soulful Maximus and Joaquin Phoenix’s unctuous, venal Commodus.

16. No Country For Old Men (2007)

You can look at it as a companion piece to Fargo– small town sheriff investigates horrible murders apparently done by inhuman monster – or you can stand back and admire how easily the Coens swirl together bits from crime thrillers, noir, deadpan comedy and Westerns, and shit yourself as Javier Bardem hunts down $2 million.

15. All About Eve (1950)

Margo Channing is a big Broadway star, and Eve the fawning fan who turns out to be an unscrupulous climber who wants Margo’s career. Smart and acerbic.

14. 12 Years a Slave (2013)

For decades, Hollywood and the Academy hadn’t wanted to look too hard at slavery. Steve McQueen’s harrowing telling of the life of Solomon Northup, a free man trapped in captivity in the South, finally forced it to.

13. Schindler’s List (1993)

What’s mad about Steven Spielberg is that he could have done just his magical fantasy stuff, or just his mega-hit blockbusters, or just his thoughtful historical dramas, and each career would make him one of the best filmmakers of the last century. Absolutely mad. This is obviously very upsetting and very good.

12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Authoritarianism, madness, Vietnam, state surveillance, the fall of the counterculture: Everything to know about mid-Seventies America is here. Even Ratched couldn’t dim its brilliance.

11. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Moves like a crime thriller but frequently looks like a great lost Dracula movie, with Anthony Hopkins leering at Jodie Foster from his dingy castle dungeon. Suspenseful and sharp.

10. The Hurt Locker (2009)

Kathryn Bigelow’s suffocatingly hot, dusty, and tense thriller set among a bomb disposal unit in Iraq feels real because it is real: Jeremy Renner had great chunks of wood with nails in dropped on his head and the crew were shot at during filming. Tense as it is, it’s also about the confusion, boredom, and disorientation of a war where most of the time the enemy is an explosive rather than other human beings.

9. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

TE Lawrence did not want a biopic. “I loathe the notion of being celluloided,” he said in 1935. “‘Vulgarity’, I would have said, only I like the vulgarity that means common man, and the badness of films seems to me like an edited and below-the-belt speciousness.” You suspect he might have been persuaded by David Lean’s ultimate epic, though. Great script, brilliantly cast (aside from Alec Guinness in brownface) and, more than anything else, ludicrously beautiful, especially Peter O’Toole’s big blue eyes popping like two great paddling pools in the desert.

8. Casablanca (1943)

Producer Hal B Wallis actually sent two options for that final line to editor Owen Marks in a telegram. “Louis, I might have known you'd mix your patriotism with a little larceny,” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it? In late 1941, as Nazi Germany rolls across Europe, cynical American expat and nightclub owner Rick (Humphrey Bogart) has to choose between getting back with his old flame Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) or sending her and her husband home to help the Czech resistance.

7. The Apartment (1960)

Everyman CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a small man lost in a gigantic office, but he gets ahead by letting four higher-ups use his flat to carry on their affairs without alerting their partners. Another even higher-up higher-up wants in too, and Baxter agrees – only to find out that he’s seeing Baxter’s office crush (Shirley MacLaine). It’s funny stuff, but it’s as sharp and sad on the soul-sucking nature of corporate life as anything Gen X came up with, and MacLaine is extraordinary.

6. The Godfather (1972)

It’s a mark of how good The Godfather still is that despite so many individual bits of it having been relentlessly pastiched and parodied over the last half century, when you sit down and watch again it feels fresh and whole. Then again, it feels slightly less high and mighty when you know that Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and James Caan spent quite a lot of their time on set mooning each other and the rest of the cast.

5. The Godfather Part II (1974)

It does everything the first part did and goes one better, despite Al Pacino initially hating the script so much he made Coppola rewrite big chunks in literally one night, as well as the exit of one of the Three Moonsketeers. Having ascended to the Corleone family throne, Michael gets involved in the Cuban revolution and we delve back into his dad Vito’s rise toward the top of the criminal underworld.

4. Rebecca (1940)

After two decades making films in Britain, Alfred Hitchcock’s only best picture Oscar win was his big arrival in Hollywood. Joan Fontaine is a young woman who falls for Laurence Olivier’s widowed aristo Maxim de Winter and moves into his Cornish pile, Manderley, as the second Mrs de Winter. Domineering housekeeper Mrs Danvers, played with chilly ferocity by Judith Anderson, still stans the first Mrs de Winter, though, and is determined to drive the new one out by any means. Hitchcock would return to the idea of haunted ex-lovers, but rarely with the economy of his Gothic masterpiece.

3. The French Connection (1971)

This harder than hard-boiled neo-noir sees Gene Hackman’s ‘Popeye’ Doyle on the tail of a gigantic shipment of heroin to New York. Despite its gumshoe realism, it’s got a musical edge to it: William Friedkin has said the famous chase sequence, where Doyle tries to keep up with a hitman on a hijacked train via the streets below, got its feel from his listening to ‘Black Magic Woman’ by Santana while editing. Intelligent and uncompromising, grimy and gorgeous, it’s the ultimate crime thriller.

2. Parasite (2019)

View full post on Youtube

Call it recency bias if you want, but sometimes recency bias is correct. A Seoul family struggling to make ends meet manage to jimmy their way into the service of a rich family in their angular dreamhouse. That barely scratches the surface though, and in Bong Joon Ho’s film there is always something slimy and disquieting beneath every glossy surface. Bong called it “a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains,” and there aren’t many films on this list which reward repeat watches like Parasite does: funnier than most comedies, scarier than most horrors, more incisive than most futureshock dystopias and endlessly inventive in the ways it pins you to your seat. So, so, so good.

1. Moonlight (2016)

View full post on Youtube

“We weren’t writing the story on paper; we were painting with moving images,” Barry Jenkins once said of his coming-of-age story about a young gay Black man growing up in Miami. It's a revealing description: silence and stillness are a big part of Moonlight, which isn't just unique among best picture winners for its subject matter, but in its electric storytelling. We follow Chiron as he grows from a frightened boy called Little to a teenager and finally to a young man known as Black, all the time wrestling with his sexuality and the expectations of everyone around him. Staggeringly beautiful and full-hearted, Moonlight quietly and tenderly pulls apart and remoulds what it means to be a man, and to be loved.

Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more delivered straight to your inbox.

SIGN UP

Need some positivity right now? Subscribe to Esquire now for a hit of style, fitness, culture and advice from the experts

SUBSCRIBE