The 10 worst films Oscared as "best picture"
Aug 18 '00 (Updated Jun 11 '09)
The Bottom Line Oscars worst mis-steps (in the top category) by decade
I fervently hope that I haven’t seen what are really the ten worst movies ever made. Instead, I have listed the worst movie to win a “best picture” Academy Award from each decade. Since I can’t decide whether “Rocky” is worse than “Ben Hur,” the listing is reverse chronological. Then I will second- (and third-...) guess Oscar voters from those years.
2000s
II thought "Gladiator" undeserving (what wasn't CGI, I felt I'd seen before in Anthony Mann's Fall of the Roman Empire, and Russell Crowe more deserving for recognition in "The Insider" (or "A Beautiful Mind"). The worst choice (at least so far) is Crash. Admittedly, it has a number of good performances from a formidable cast, and the award for best original screenplay is even worse than naming this mess of contrivance and liberal guilt "best picture." This "upset" is going to provide company in the "What were they thinking?" head-scratching retrospect with such earlier ones as "The Greatest Show on Earth" and (for directing) Traffic (both of which also had stellar casts (including Don Cheadle in "Traffic" as well as in "Crash") in dubious material).
1990s
I loathe “Titanic (1997) and "Braveheart"(1995) and am more than a little dubious about “Dances With Wolves” (1990), but “Forrest Gump" (1994) is every bit as manipulative and even schmaltzier than they are.
1980s
Whereas I was tempted to include many of the 1990s' winners for the list, there were no Oscar winning pictures of the 1980s that are as awful. "Gandhi" (1982) was the most overblown of the lot, despite a convincing performance in the title role by Ben Kingsley. "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989) was probably the least cinematic, but I adore Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. Also there was no compelling better choice for that year. "Ordinary People" (1980) is also a dubious choice: despite outstanding performances all around, it looks like dirty dishwater and has unconvincing "action scenes."
1970s
Very easy: "Rocky" (1976), a hideously manipulative movie. I can't bear to write more about it.
1960s
Although I don't think "West Side Story" (1961) was a good movie, I like it. For that matter, I even sort of like Richard Beymer, George Chakiris, and Natalie Wood, the latter two unbelievable as Puerto Ricans. Rita Moreno and Russ Tamblyn have much higher energy. I like the music and choreography better than those in "The Sound of Music" (also directed by Robert Wise). Both have great opening scenes but falter. (I've finally gotten over my frustration at being forced to go to "The Sound of Music" on its original release.)
1950s
I wonder if those who have asserted that Gigi (1958) is the greatest of movie musicals have ever seen the musicals in which people, you know, like D-A-N-C-E! (e.g., "Singing in the Rain" or "Band Wagon" or "Cabaret" or "West Side Story;" Busby Berkeley movies or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies...) It wasn't even Minnelli's best Parisian musical of the 50s (Caron got to dance with Gene Kelly in "An American in Paris"). While "Gigi" has a certain charm (saccharine compared to Colette's novel), it is overlong, However, "Gigi" is a fresh breeze compared to Ben Hur the Oscared "best film" of the following year!
I can't understand how the great director William Wyler could make such a bloated, boring, unengaging (visually and emotionally) film as "Ben Hur" is. The chariot race is fairly exciting, though too long, and a case could be made for Hugh Griffith earning his Oscar, but Stephen Boyd is more interesting and nuanced as Messala than Heston is in the title role (not even one of his best performances as a clenched-jaw "hero"). The whole galley-rescue-adoption is ludicrous (and not even cinematic). The music is overwrought, especially around Jesus.
1940s
With my animus against brazen manipulativeness, I had to consider William Wyler's much-honored wartime (1942) propaganda film "Mrs. Miniver." Although I can easily resist Teresa Wright in it, I can't resist Greer Garson and Dame May Whitty. In contrast, I can easily resist Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in "Going My Way" (1944). It's just as manipulative and even more sentimental than "Mrs. Miniver."
The 1930s' list of "best pictures" cannot compete in awfulness with the 50s or 90s, though "Cavalcade" is overwrought and dull and Cimarron is very bad (not to mention incoherent). Richard Dix is probably the silliest "hero" of a western until Jack Lemmon in "Cowboy" (and maybe even then). That Dix was nominated for a best actor award is incomprehensible to me.
There were only four 1920s "best picture" Oscars. The first sound one, the turgid backstage love triangle"Broadway Melody"" (1928) is an easy choice.
To reach the magic number for a "ten worst" list, I'll add "Midnight Cowboy" from 1969. A pretty terrible movie with Dustin Hoffman ripping at the heartstrings as a trash-talking Little Nell. Jon Voight is almost credible as the naive fresh meat for the jaded city.
It edges out another of the 1950s' staggeringly awful Cecil B. deMille's demented circus film (another one with Charlton Heston, but also James Stewart, who was splendid in so many 1950s films) "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952).
Since the awards have to go to something released in a particular year, I will suggest one or more better candidate (except in the first instance, these are from among films with some other nominations, even though, often the best films are shut out even of the nominations).
1928 Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (which wasn't even nominated; I haven't seen the four that were nominated and lost, only the winning one)
1930 Joseph von Sternberg's "Morocco" with Marlene Dietrich following Foreign Legionnaire Gary Cooper into the desert would be my choice. Other movies considerably superior to "Cimmaron" include "The Front Page" and "Little Caesar."... and F. W. Murnau's amazing (silent) "Tabu" (for which Floyd Crosby did get an Oscar for his cinematography). I draw blanks on three of the nominated movies, including "Skippy" for which Norman Taurog won the directing Oscar.
1933 Joseph von Sternberg's "Shangha Express"
1944 Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" (if not that, t Otto Preminger's "Laura" or George Cukor's "Gaslight" or "Mr. Skeffington," an admittedly idiosyncratic favorite of mine, directed by Vincent Sherman with a great performance by Bette Davis and a transcendent one by Claude Rains are all better)
1952 René Clement's "Forbidden Games" (Jeux Interdit) or, if it has to be American, John Ford's "The Quiet Man" or Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon" (both are creaky, but contain archetypal performances)
1958 Richard Brooks's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (or, perhaps, William Wyler's "The Big Country")
1959 Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" (or Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" or Francois Truffaut's "400 Blows" or Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" or Jack Clayton's "Room at the Top")
1961 Robert Rossen's "The Hustler" or Federico Fellini 's "La dolce vita"
1969 Sydney Pollack's "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" or George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" or Ronald Neame's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" or Costas-Garvas's "Z"
1976 Martin Scorcese's "Taxi Driver" (astoundingly, Scorcese was not nominated, though the film, Robert De Niro, and Jody Foster were).
1982 Sydney Pollack's "Tootsie" (or perhaps Steven Spielberg's "E.T." or Alan J. Pakula's "Sophie's Choice")
1994 Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Red" (or, Nicholas Hynter's "The Madness of King George," or, perhaps, Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" or Robert Redford's "Quiz Show")
2000 Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena or Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and for 2001, instead of "A Beautiful Mind," I'd have chosen "Moulin Rouge" or "Gosford Park." And, instead of Crowe, Javier Bardem should have won for Before Night Falls (though I thought Crowe lost the one he should have received for "The Insider.")
2005 Brokeback Mountain received best picture awards from almost every award-granter except the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I thought (but have since changed my mind) that "Crash" should have won for best song, but not for either best original screenplay nor best picture. If not "Brokeback Mountain" or A History of Violence! The two 2005 nominees for best foreign-language film I've seen— the winner Tsotsi and Paradise Now are also better than "Crash," a movie that I don't consider of worthy of being in the top-ten 2005 movies, let alone the top one.
P.S. I don't always rebel against manipulation (for instance, "Psycho"), but I think the best big pictures are anti-epics. My list of the greatest anti-epics is at
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-6C68-FDDB12-397A379D-prod3
and my list of the best epics, always the main Oscar contenders, is at
http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-3CA5-E11E7A-3979EE0D-prod3,
a list of my favorite films is at http://www.epinions.com/content_3088228484,
and a list of what I consider the ten best films of all times is at
http://www.epinions.com/content_3090129028 and a list of my favorites at http://www.epinions.com/content_3088228484.
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