Academy Award for Best Picture

The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually since the awards debuted in 1929, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to producers working in the film industry 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. As of the 87th Academy Awards, there have been 520 films nominated for the Best Picture award.

History

Category name changes

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 epic Wings, 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. 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.

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

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 of Shakespeare in Love receiving the award.

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

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.

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. As of 2014 it is the Producers Branch Executive Committee that makes such exceptions, only in "rare and extraordinary circumstance[s]."

Best Picture and Best Director

The Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 87 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 62 have also been awarded Best Director. Only four films have won Best Picture without their directors being nominated: 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).

Nomination limit increased

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). 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." At the same time, the voting system was switched from first-past-the-post to instant runoff voting (also known as preferential voting). 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. 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."

Controversies

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). Similarly, the award rarely goes to films produced by non-U.S. studios; only 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.

Other points of contention include categories of film with few or no nominations or awards. Only three animated films have been nominated (Disney's Beauty and the Beast was the first, and Disney-Pixar's Up and Toy Story 3 were nominated after the Academy expanded the number of nominees) and none have won; no science fiction or superhero film has won; only one fantasy film has won (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003); and no light comedies have won since the 1970s. Also no documentary (eligible in a separate cateory) has been nominated for Best Picture.

This category, like the Academy Awards in general, has also received criticism for disproportionately recognizing stories about white men over those of women and/or people of color. Of the films that have won Best Picture, few (All About Eve, 1950; Terms of Endearment, 1983) have featured women exclusively in leading roles, and only four (Gandhi, 1982; The Last Emperor, 1987; Slumdog Millionaire, 2008; and 12 Years a Slave, 2013) have featured people of color exclusively in leading roles. No film featuring women of color exclusively in leading roles has won, and only three (The Color Purple, 1985; Precious, 2009; and Beasts of the Southern Wild, 2012) have been nominated.

Sequel nominations and winners

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.

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 Lambs was 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.

Silent film winners

The Artist (with the exception of a single scene of dialogue, and dream sequence with sound effects) was the first silent film since Wings to win Best Picture. The film was also the first silent nominee since The Patriot, as well as the first Best Picture winner shot entirely in black-and-white since 1960's The Apartment (Schindler's List, the 1993 winner, was predominantly black-and-white but contained some color sequences).

Version availability

No Best Picture winner has been lost, though a few such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Lawrence of Arabia exist only in a form altered from their original, award-winning release form, usually due to editing for reissue (and subsequently partly restored by archivists) while other winners and nominees such as Tom Jones and Star Wars are widely available only in subsequently altered versions. The Broadway Melody originally had some sequences photographed in two-color Technicolor. This footage survives only in black and white. The 1928 film The Patriot is the only Best Picture nominee that is lost. The Racket, also from 1928, was believed lost for many years until a print was found in Howard Hughes' archives. It has since been restored and shown on Turner Classic Movies. Also, the only surviving complete prints of 1931's East Lynne and 1934's The White Parade exist within the UCLA film archive.

Winners and nominees

In the list below, winners are listed first in the colored row, followed by the other nominees. Except for the early years (when the Academy used a non-calendar year), the year shown is the one in which the film first premiered in Los Angeles County, California; normally this is also the year of first release, but it may be the year after first release (as with Casablanca and, if the film-festival premiere is considered, Crash). This is also the year before the ceremony at which the award is given; for example, a film exhibited theatrically during 2005 was eligible for consideration for the 2005 Best Picture Oscar, awarded in 2006. The number of the ceremony (1st, 2nd, etc.) appears in parentheses after the awards year, linked to the article on that ceremony. Each individual entry shows the title followed by the production company, and the producer.

Until 1950, the Best Picture award was given to the production company; from 1951 on, it has gone to the producer or producers. The Academy used the producer credits of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) until 1998, when all five producers of Shakespeare in Love made speeches after its win. A three-producer limit has applied since. There was controversy over the exclusion of some PGA-credited producers of Crash and Little Miss Sunshine. The Academy can make exceptions to the limit, as when Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were posthumously among the four nominated for The Reader.

For the first ceremony, three films were nominated for the award. For the following three years, five films were nominated for the award. This was expanded to eight in 1933, to ten in 1934, and to twelve in 1935, before being dropped back to ten in 1937. In 1945 it was further reduced to five. This number remained until 2009, when the limit was raised to ten and later adjusted in 2011, to vary between five and ten.

For the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. For example, the 2nd Academy Awards presented on April 3, 1930, recognized films that were released between August 1, 1928, and July 31, 1929. Starting with the 7th Academy Awards, held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full previous calendar year from January 1 to December 31.

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Notes

References

External links

Oscars.org (official Academy site)
Oscar.com (official ceremony promotional site)
The Academy Awards Database (official site)

Academy Award for Best Picture

Wednesday, April 15, 2015